LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



i|ap. -,--, - Snp^rigl^t Ifu.. 



Slielf.J]A-l«3 

UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



ii 






MACAULAY'S SECOND ESSAY 



ON THE 



EARL OF CHATHAM. 



EDITED BY 



W. W. CURTIS, A.M., 

PRINCIPAL OF HIGH SCHOOL, PAWTUCKET, R.I. 



i 1 (tSf^«hnCSTnl / f 




LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN, 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK. 



Wvx 



--^. 






Copyright, 1891, 
By Leach, Shewell, & Sanborn. 



^' 



lOrCONGRE^^I 
IWAiHINGTONl 



C. J. PETERS & SON, 
Typographers and Electrotypers. 



Press of Berwick & Smith, 



PREFACE. 



This essay is the last Macaulay ever wrote for the 
Edinburgh Review. It bears the stamp of his mature 
years, and is a model of pure., straightforward English. 
The object of the essay, as a requirement for admission 
to the colleges of New England, is to present to the 
young student an example of what is most worthy of 
study and imitation in English style. The essay is to 
be studied as a piece of literature, and the notes are 
to be brought into service only as an aid to a complete 
understanding of the text. To those, however, who 
desire to gain a knowledge of English History, — and 
I believe there is no better way to study the political 
history of the period covered by the essay, — the notes 
will be found suggestive. Some one has said that 
Macaulay wrote of Pitt with more sympathy and deeper 
insight than of any other statesman. 

W. W. Curtis. 
Pawtucket, R.L, 1891. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Chronology of the Life of Macaulay vii 

Chronology of the Life of Pitt ix 

Introduction xi 

Earl of Chatham 1 

Notes 123 



CHRONOLOGY OF MACAULAY'S LIFE. 



1800. Born on October 25, at Rotliley Temple, Leicestershire. 

He was the eldest son of Zachary Macaulay and Selina 

Mills. 
1818. October. Entered Trinity College. 
1822. Graduated as B.A. 

1824. Elected to a Fellowship. 

1825. August. Contributed his first article to the Edinburgh 

Review, an essay on Milton. 

1826. February. Called to the Bar and joined the Northern Cir- 

cuit. 
1828. Commissioner of Bankruptcy. 
1830. Elected a member of Parliament for Calne. 
1830-32. Speeches on the Reform Bill, which "placed him in 

the front rank of orators, if not of debaters." 
Left penniless by the abolition of the Commissionership 

of Bankruptcy, and the expiration of his Fellowship. 
1834. January. Contributed to the Edinburgh Review his first 

Essay on the Earl of Chatham. 

1834. February 15. Sailed for Madras, India, to become the 
legal adviser to the Supreme Council of India. 

1837. Drew up the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal 

Procedure. 

1838. June. Returned to England. 
Death of his father. 



viii CHRONOLOGY OF 3IACAULAY'S LIFE, 

1838. October. Tour in Italy. 

1839. Elected a member of Parliament for Edinburgh. 
1839-41. Secretary of War in Whig Ministry. 

1842. Lays of Ancient Rome published. 

1844. October. His second Essay on the Earl of Chatham ap- 
peared in the Edinburgh Beview^ 

1846-48. Paymaster General of the Forces. 

1847. Defeated for re-election. 

1848. First two volumes of his History of England published. 

1849. Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. 
Took a formal leave of political life. 

1852. Again elected for Edinburgh, although not a candidate. 
Loss of health. 

1854. Authorized collection of his speeches published. 

1855. Third and fourth volumes of History of England. 

1856. Resigned his seat in Parliament. 

1857. Raised to a Peerage with title of Baron Macaulay. 
1859. ^December 28. His death. 



CHRONOLOGY OP PITT'S LIFE. 



1708. November 15. Born at Boconnoc, in Cornwall. He was 
the second son of Robert Pitt and Harriet Villiers. His 
grandfather, Thomas Pitt, was Governor of Madras, India, 
and brought home the celebrated Pitt diamond, after- 
wards the most precious of the crown jewels of France. 

1725, Entered Trinity College, Oxford. 

Forced to leave college before taking a degree, because of 
gout, which always troubled him. Travelled in France 
and Italy for his health. Choosing the army for his pro- 
fession, he obtained a cornet's commission. 

1735. Entered Parliament for Old Sarum. 
Opponent of the Walpole ministry. 

1736. April. His first speech in Parliament was on the marriage 

of Frederic, Prince of Wales. 
Groom of the bed-chamber to that prince. 
Began to be recognized as an orator. 

1742. Excluded from the new cabinet formed on the resignation 
of Walpole. 
Acted with the opposition. Denounced Carteret. 
1744. The Pelhams in power. 
1746, Paymaster of the Forces. 

1754. Married Hester Grenville, sister of Earl Temple and George 
Grenville. 

1754. Henry Pelham died, and the Duke of Newcastle succeeded 
him. 



X CHRONOLOGY OF PITT'S LIFE. 

1755. Leader of the Opposition. 

1756. November. Newcastle forced to resign. 

1756 (Dec. )-1757 (April). Pitt Premier. Forced to resign. 

1757. April- July. Government without a ministry. 

July. Coalition between Pitt and Newcastle, Pitt becom- 
ing Secretary of State. 

1759. The great victories in America, India, and Europe. 
Pitt called the " Great Commoner." 
Height of his popularity. 

1761. October. Resigned. Accepted an annual pension of £3,000 
for three lives. 
His wife created a peeress. 

1765, Refused to assume the direction of affairs at the request of 

the king. 

1765-66. Speeches condemning the Stamp Act. 

1766. He forms a new ministry and takes the Privy Seal for 

himself. 
Raised to a Peerage with the title of Earl of Chatham. 
Secluded himself for nearly two years at Hayes, because of 

sickness (mental). 

1768, October. Resigned. 

1770-71. Health restored. Again in his seat in Parliament. 

1775, Speech on the American War. 

1777. Speech against employing Indians to aid the English in 

America. 

1778. April 7. Fell in an apoplectic fit while addressing the 

Lords. 
1778. May 11. Death. 



INTRODUCTION. 



"William Pitt, . . . the greatest minister of his century, one of 
the few very great men of his age, among orators the only peer 
of Demosthenes, the man without title or fortune, who, finding 
England in an abyss of weakness and disgrace, conquered Canada 
and the Ohio valley and Guadaloupe, sustained Prussia from an- 
nihilation, humbled France, gained the dominion of the seas, won 
supremacy in Hindostan, and at home vanquished faction." . . . 

George Bancroft. 

"The depth of his conviction, his passionate love for all that he 
deemed lofty and true, his fiery energy, his poetic imaginative- 
ness, his theatrical airs and rhetoric, his haughty self-assumption, 
his pompousness and extravagance, were not more puzzling to his 
contemporaries than the confidence with which he appealed to the 
higher sentiments of mankind, the scorn with which he turned 
from a corruption which had, till then, been the great engine of 
politics, the undoubting faith which he felt in himself, in the 
grandeur of his aims, and in his power to carry them out." 

J. R. Green, 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM.' 



More than ten years ago we commenced a sketch of 
the political life of the great Lord Chatham. We then 
stopped at the death of George the Second, with the 
intention of speedily resuming our task. Circumstances, 
which it Avould be tedious to explain, long prevented us 5 
from carrying this intention into effect. Nor can we 
regret the delay. For the materials which were within 
our reach in 1834 were scanty and unsatisfactory, when 
compared with those which we at present possess. 
Even now, though we have had access to some valuable 10 
sources of information which have not yet been opened 
to the public, we cannot but feel that the history of the 
first ten years of the reign of George the Third is but 
imperfectly known to us. Nevertheless, we are inclined 
to think that we are in a condition to lay before our 15 
readers a narrative neither uninstructive nor uninterest- 
ing. We therefore return with pleasure to our long 
interrupted labor. 

We left Pitt in the zenith of prosperity and glory, the 

1 Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. 4 vols. 8vo. 
London: 1840. 

Letters of Horace "Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Horace Mann. 
4vols. 8vo. London: 1843-4. 

1 



2 MACAULAY. 

idol of England, the terror of France, the admiration of 
the whole civilized world. The wind, from whatever 
quarter it blew, carried to England tidings of battles 
won, fortresses taken, provinces added to the empire. 
5 At home, factions had sunk into a lethargy, such as had 
never been known since the great religious schism of the 
sixteenth century had roused the public mind from 
repose. 

In order that the events which we have to relate may 

10 be clearly understood, it may be desirable that we should 
advert to the causes which had for a time suspended the 
animation of both the great English parties. 

If, rejecting all that is merely accidental, we look at 
the essential characteristics of the Whig and the Tory, 

15 we may consider each of them as the representative of a 
great principle, essential to the welfare of nations. One 
is, in an especial manner, the guardian of liberty, and 
the other, of order. One is the moving power, and the 
other the steadying power of the state. One is the sail, 

20 without which society would make no progress, the 
other the ballast, without which there would be small 
safety in a tempest. But, during the forty-six years 
which followed the accession of the House of Hanover, 
these distinctive peculiarities seemed to be effaced. 

25 The Whig conceived that he could not better serve the 
cause of civil and religious freedom than by strenuously 
supporting the Protestant dynasty. The Tory conceived 
that he could not better prove his hated of revolutions 
than by attacking a government to which a revolution 
had given birth. Both came by degrees to attach more 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 3 

importance to tlie means than to the end. Both were 
thrown into unnatural situations ; and both, like animals 
transported to an uncongenial climate, languished and 
degenerated. The Tory, removed from the sunshine of 
the court, was as a camel in the snows of Lapland. The 5 
Whig, basking in the rays of royal favor, was as a rein- 
deer in the sands of Arabia. 

Dante tells us that he saw, in Malebolge, a strange 
encounter between a human form and a serpent. The 
enemies, after cruel wounds inflicted, stood for a time 10 
glaring on each other. A great cloud surrounded them, 
and then a wonderful metamorphosis began. Each crea- 
ture was transfigured into the likeness of its antagonist. 
The serpent's tail divided itself into two legs ; the man's 
legs intertwined themselves into a tail. The body 15 
of the serpent put forth arms ; the arms of the man 
shrank into his body. At length the serpent stood up a 
man, and spake; the man sank down a serpent, and 
glided hissing away. Something like this was the trans- 
formation which, during the reign of George the First, 20 
befell the two English parties. Each gradually took 
the shape and color of its foe, till at length the Tory 
rose up erect the zealot of freedom, and the Whig 
crawled and licked the dust at the feet of power. 

It is true that, when these degenerate politicians dis- 25 
cussed questions merely speculative, and, above all, 
when they discussed questions relating to the conduct of 
their own grandfathers, they still seemed to differ as 
their grandfathers had differed. The Whig, who, dur- 
ing three Parliaments, had never given one vote against 



4 MACAULAT. 

the court, and who was ready to sell his soul for the 
Comptroller's staff or for the Great Wardrobe, still pro- 
fessed to draw his political doctrines from Locke and 
Milton, still worshipped the memory of Pym and Hamp- 

5 den, and would still, on the thirtieth of January, take 
his glass, first to the man in the mask, and then to the 
man who would do it without a mask. The Tory, on the 
other hand, while he reviled the mild and temperate 
Walpole as a deadly enemy of liberty, could see nothing 

10 to reprobate in the iron tyranny of Strafford and Laud. 
But, whatever judgment the Whig or the Tory of that 
age might pronounce on transactions long past, there 
can be no doubt that, as respected the practical questions 
then pending, the Tory was a reformer, and indeed an 

15 intemperate and indiscreet reformer, while the Whig 
was conservative even to bigotry. We have ourselves 
seen similar effects produced in a neighboring country 
by similar causes. Who would have believed, fifteen 
years ago, that M. Guizot and M. Villemain would have 

20 to defend property and social order against the attacks 
of such enemies as M. Genoude and M. de La Eoche 
Jaquelin ? 

Thus the successors of the old Cavaliers had turned 
demagogues ; the successors of the old Eoundheads had 

25 turned courtiers. Yet was it long before their mutual 
animosity began to abate ; for it is the nature of parties 
to retain their original enmities far. more firmly than 
their original principles. During many years, a genera- 
tion of Whigs, whom Sidney would have spurned as 
slaves, continue to wage deadly war with a genera- 



• THE EABL OF CHATHAM. 5 

tion of Tories whom Jeffreys would have hanged for 
republicans. 

Through the whole reign of George the First, and 
through nearly half of the reign of George the Second, 
a Tory was regarded as an enemy of the reigning house, 5 
and was excluded from all the favors of the crown. 
Though most of the country gentlemen were Tories, none 
but Whigs were created peers and baronets. Though most 
of the clergy were Tories, none but Whigs were appointed 
deans and bishops. In every county, opulent and well- 10 
descended Tory squires complained that their names 
were left out of the commission of the peace, while men 
of small estate and mean birth, who were for toleration 
and excise, septennial parliaments and standing armies, 
presided at quarter sessions, and became deputy lieu- 15 
tenants. 

By degrees some approaches were made towards a 
reconciliation. While Walpole was at the head of 
affairs, enmity to his power induced a large and power- 
ful body of Whigs, headed by the heir apparent of the 20 
throne, to make an alliance with the Tories, and a truce 
even with the Jacobites. After Sir Eobert's fall, the 
ban which lay on the Tory party was taken off. The 
chief places in the administration continued to be filled 
by Whigs, and, indeed, could scarcely have been filled 25 
otherwise ; for the Tory nobility and gentry, though 
strong in numbers and in property, had among them 
scarcely a single man distinguished by talents, either for 
business or for debate. A few of them, however, were 
admitted to subordinate offices; and this indulgence 



6 MAC A UL AT. 

produced a softening effect on the temper of the whole 
body. The first levee of George the Second after Wal- 
pole's resignation was a remarkable spectacle. Mingled 
with the constant supporters of the House of Brunswick, 

5 with the Eussells, the Cavendishes, and the Pelhams, 
appeared a crowd of faces utterly unknown to the pages 
and gentlemen ushers, lords of rural manors, whose ale 
and foxhounds were renowned in the neighborhood of 
the Mendip hills, or round the Wrekin, but who had 

10 never crossed the threshold of the palace since the days 
when Oxford, with the white staff in his hand, stood 
behind Queen Anne. 

During the eighteen years which followed this day, both 
factions were gradually sinking deeper and deeper into 

15 repose. The apathy of the public mind is partly to be 
ascribed to the unjust violence with which the administra- 
tion of Walpole had been assailed. In the body politic, 
as in the natural body, morbid languor generally succeeds 
morbid excitement. The people had been maddened by 

20 sophistry, by calumny, by rhetoric, by stimulants applied 
to the national pride. In the fulness of bread, they had 
raved as if famine had been in the land. While enjoy- 
ing such a measure of civil and religious freedom as, till 
then, no great society had ever known, they had cried 

25 out for a Timoleon or a Brutus to stab their oppressor to 
the heart. They were in this frame of mind when the 
change of administration took place ; and they soon 
found that there was to be no change whatever in the 
system of government. The natural consequences fol- 
lowed. To frantic zeal succeeded sullen indifference. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 7 

The cant of patriotism had not merely ceased to charm 
the public ear, but had become as nauseous as the cant 
of Puritanism after the downfall of the Rump. The hot 
fit was over : the cold fit had begun : and it was long 
before seditious arts, or even real grievances, could bring 5 
back the fiery paroxysm which had run its course and 
reached its termination. ♦ 

Two attempts were made to disturb this tranquillity. 
The banished heir of the House of Stuart headed a 
rebellion ; the discontented heir of the House of Bruns- 10 
wick headed an opposition. Both the rebellion and the 
opposition came to nothing. The battle of Culloden 
annihilated the Jacobite party. The death of Prince 
Frederic dissolved the faction which, under his guidance, 
had feebly striven to annoy his father's government. 15 
His chief followers hastened to make their peace with 
the ministry ; and the political torpor became complete. 

Five years after the death of Prince Frederic, the 
public mind was for a time violently excited. But this 
excitement had nothing to do with the old disputes 20 
between Whigs and Tories. England was at war with 
France. The war had been feebly conducted. Minorca 
had been torn from us. Our fleet had retired before the 
white flag of the House of Bourbon. A bitter sense of 
humiliation, new to the proudest and bravest of nations, 25 
superseded every other feeling. The cry of all the 
counties and great towns of the realm was for a govern- 
tnent which would retrieve the honor of the English 
arms. The two most powerful men in the country were 
the Duke of Newcastle and Pitt. Alternate victories 



8 MACAULAY. 

and defeats had made them sensible that neither of them 
could stand alone. The interest of the state, and the 
interest of their own ambition, impelled them to coalesce. 
By their coalition was formed the ministry which was in 
5 power when George the Third ascended the throne. 

The I more carefully the structure of this celebrated 
ministry is examined, the more shall we see reason to 
marvel at the skill or the luck which had combined in 
one harmonious whole such various and, as it seemed, 

10 incompatible elements of force. The influence which is 
derived from stainless integrity, the influence which is 
derived from the vilest arts of corruption, the strength 
of aristocratical connection, the strength of democratical 
enthusiasm, all these things were for the first time 

15 found together. Newcastle brought to the coalition a 
vast mass of power, which had descended to him from 
Walpole and Pelham. The public offices, the church, 
the courts of law, the army, the navy, the diplomatic 
service, swarmed with his creatures. The boroughs, 

20 which long afterwards made up the memorable schedules 
A and B, were represented by his nominees. The great 
Whig families, which, during several generations, had 
been trained in the discipline of party warfare, and were 
accustomed to stand together in a firm phalanx, acknowl- 

25 edged him as their captain. Pitt, on the other hand, 
had what Newcastle wanted, an eloquence which stirred 
the passions and charmed the imagination, a high repu- 
tation for purity, and the confidence and ardent love of 
millions. 

The partition which the two miiiisters made of the 



THE EAEL OF CHATHAM. 9 

powers of government was singularly happy. Each 
occupied a province for which he was well qualified ; 
and neither had any inclination to intrude himself into 
the province of the other. Newcastle took the treasury, 
the civil and ecclesiastical patronage, and the disposal of 5 
that part of the secret service money which was then 
employed in bribing members of Parliament. Pitt was 
Secretary of State, with the direction of the war and of 
foreign affairs. Thus the filth of all the noisome a:nd 
pestilential sewers of government was poured into one lO 
channel. Through the other passed only what was 
bright and stainless. Mean and selfish politicians, pining 
for commissionerships, gold sticks, and ribands, flocked 
to the great house at the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
There, at every levee, appeared eighteen or twenty pair 15 
of lawn sleeves ; for there was not, it was said, a single 
Prelate who had not owed either his first elevation or 
some subsequent translation to Newcastle. There 
appeared those members of the House of Commons in 
whose silent votes the main strength of the government 20 
lay. One wanted a place in the excise for his butler. 
Another came about a prebend for his son. A third 
whispered that he had always stood by his Grace and 
the Protestant succession ; that his last election had 
been very expensive j that potwallopers had now no 25 
conscience ; that he had been forced to take up money 
on mortgage ; and that he hardly knew where to turn 
for five hundred pounds. The Duke pressed all their 
hands, passed his arms round all their shoulders, patted 
all their backs, and sent away some with wages, and 



10 MACAULAY. 

some with promises. From this traffic Pitt stood 
haughtily aloof. Not only was he himself incorruptible, 
but he shrank from the loathsome drudgery of corrupt- 
ing others. He had not, however, been twenty years in 
5 Parliament, and ten in office, without discovering how 
the government was carried on. He was perfectly 
aware that bribery was practised on a large scale by his 
colleagues. Hating the practice, yet despairing of put- 
ting it down, and doubting whether, in those times, any 

10 ministry could stand without it, he determined to be 
blind to it. He would see nothing, know nothing, 
believe nothing. People who came to talk to him about 
shares in lucrative contracts, or about the means of 
securing a Cornish corporation, were soon put out of 

15 countenance by his arrogant humility. They did him 
too much honor. Such matters were beyond his capa- 
city. It was true that his poor advice about expeditions 
and treaties was listened to with indulgence by a gra- 
cious sovereign. If the question were, who should com- 

20 mand in North America, or who should be ambassador at 
Berlin, his colleagues would probably condescend to take 
his opinion. But he had not the smallest influence with 
the Secretary of the Treasury, and could not venture to 
ask even for a tide-waiter's place. 

25 It may be doubted whether he did not owe as much of 
his popularity to his ostentatious purity as to his elo- 
quence, or to his talents for the administration of war. 
It was everywhere said with delight and admiration that 
the great Commoner, without any advantages of birth or 
fortune, had, in spite of the dislike of the Court and of 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 11 

the aristocracy, made himself the first man in England, 
and made England the first country in tlie world ; that 
his name was mentioned with awe in every palace from 
Lisbon to Moscow ; that his trophies were in all the 
four quarters of the globe ; yet that he was still plain 5 
William Pitt, without title or riband, without pension 
or sinecure place. Whenever he should retire, after 
saving the state, he must sell his coach horses and his 
silver candlesticks. Widely as the taint of corruption 
had spread, his hands were clean. They had never re- 10 
ceived, they had never given, the price of infamy. Thus 
the coalition gathered to itself support from all the high 
and all the low parts of human nature, and was strong 
with the whole united strength of virtue and of 
Mammon. 15 

Pitt and Newcastle were co-ordinate chief ministers. 
The subordinate places had been filled on the principle 
of including in the government every party and shade of 
party, the avowed Jacobites alone excepted, nay, every 
public man who, from his abilities or from his situation, 20 
seemed likely to be either useful in office or formidable 
in opposition. 

The Whigs, according to what was then considered as 
their prescriptive right, held by far the largest share of 
power. The main support of the administration was 25 
what may be called the great Whig connection, a con- 
nection which, during near half a century, had generally 
had the chief sway in the country, and which derived an 
immense authority from rank, wealth, borough interest, 
and firm union. To this connection, of which Newcastle 



12 MACAULAY. 

was the head, belonged the houses of Cavendish, Lennox, 
Fitzroy, Bentinck, Manners, Conway, Went worth, and 
many others of high note. 

There were two other powerful Whig connections, 

5 either of which might have been a nucleus for a strong 
opposition. But room had been found in the government 
for both. They were known as the Grenvilles and the 
Bedfords. 

The head of the Grenvilles was Eichard Earl Temple. 

10 His talents for administration and debate were of no 
high order. But his great possessions, his turbulent and 
unscrupulous character, his restless activity, and his skill 
in the most ignoble tactics of faction, made him one of 
the most formidable enemies that a ministry could have. 

15 He was keeper of the privy seal. His brother George 

was treasurer of the navy. They were supposed to be 

on terms of close friendship with Pitt, who had married 

their sister, and was the most uxorious of husbands. 

The Bedfords, or, as they were called by their enemies, 

20 the Bloomsbury gang, professed to be led by John Duke 
of Bedford, but in truth led him wherever they chose, 
and very often led him where he never would have gone 
of his own accord. He had many good qualities of head 
and heart, and would have been certainly a respectable, 

25 and possibly a distinguished man, if he had been less 
under the influence of his friends, or more fortunate in 
choosing them. Some of them were indeed, to do them 
justice, men of parts. But here, we are afraid, eulogy 
must end. Sandwich and Kigby were able debaters, 
pleasant boon companions, dexterous intriguers, masters 



THE EAItL OF CHATHAM. 13 

of all the arts of jobbing and electioneering, and, both 
in public and private life, shamelessly immoral. Wey- 
mouth had a natural eloquence, which sometimes aston- 
ished those who knew how little he owed to study. But 
he was indolent and dissolute, and had early impaired a 5 
fine estate with the dice box, and a fine constitution with 
the bottle. The wealth and power of the Duke, and the 
talents and audacity of some of his retainers, might 
have seriously annoyed the strongest ministry. But 
his assistance had been secured. He was Lord Lieu- lO 
tenant of Ireland ; Rigby was his secretary ; and the 
whole party dutifully supported the measures of the 
Government. 

Two men had, a short time before, been thought likely . 
to contest with Pitt the lead of the House of Commons, 15 
William Murray and Henry Fox. But Murray had been 
removed to the Lords, and was Chief Justice of the 
King's Bench. Fox was indeed still in the Commons : 
but means had been found to secure, if not his strenuous 
support, at least his silent acquiescence. He was a poor 20 
man ; he was a doting father. The office of Paymaster- 
General during an expensive war was, in that age, per- 
haps the most lucrative situation in the gift of the 
government. This office was bestowed on Fox. The 
prospect of making a noble fortune in a few years, and 25 
of providing amply for his darling boy Charles, was 
irresistibly tempting. To hold a subordinate place, how- 
ever profitable, after having led the House of Commons, 
and having been entrusted with the business of forming 
a ministry, was indeed a great descent. But a punctil- 



14 MACAULAT. 

ious sense of personal dignity was no part of the char- 
acter of Hemy Fox. 

We have not time to enumerate all the other men of 
weight, who were, by some tie or other, attached to the 
5 government. We may mention Hardwicke, reputed the 
first lawyer of the age ; Legge, reputed the first financier 
of the age ; the acute and ready Oswald ; the bold and 
humorous Nugent ; Charles Townshend, the most brilliant 
and versatile of mankind ; Elliot, Barrington, North, 

10 Pratt. Indeed, as far as we recollect, there were in the 
whole House of Commons only two men of distinguished 
abilities who were not connected with the government, 
and those two men stood so low in public estimation, 
that the only service which they could have rendered to 

15 any government would have been to oppose it. We speak 
of Lord George Sackville and Bubb Dodington. 

Though most of the official men, and all the members of 
the cabinet, were reputed Whigs, the Tories were by no 
means excluded from employment. Pitt had gratified 

20 many of them, with commands in the militia, which 
increased both their income and their importance in their 
own counties ; and they were therefore in better humor 
than at any time since the death of Anne. Some of the 
party still continued to grumble over their punch at the 

25 Cocoa Tree ; but in the House of Commons not a single 
one of the malcontents durst lift his eyes above the 
buckle of Pitt's shoe. 

Thus there was absolutely no opposition. Nay, there 
was no sign from which it could be guessed in what 
quarter opposition was likely to arise. Several years 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 15 

passed during which Parliament seemed to have abdicated 
its chief functions. The Journals of the House of Com- 
mons, during four sessions, contain no trace of a division 
on a party question. The supplies, though beyond pre- 
cedent great, were voted without discussion. The most 5 
animated debates of that period were on road bills and 
inclosure bills. 

The old King was content ; and it mattered little 
whether he were content or not. It would have been 
impossible for him to emancipate himself from a min- 10 
istry so powerful, even if he had been inclined to do so. 
But he had no such inclination. He had once, indeed, 
been strongly prejudiced against Pitt, and had repeatedly 
been ill used by Newcastle ; but the vigor and success 
with which the war had been waged in Germany, and 15 
the smoothness with which all public business was car- 
ried on, had produced a favorable change in the royal 
mind. 

Such was the posture of affairs when, on the twenty-fifth 
of October, 1760, George the Second suddenly died, and 20 
George the Third, then twenty-two years old, became King. 
The situation of George the Third differed widely from 
that of his grandfather and that of his great-grandfather. 
Many years had elapsed since a sovereign of England had 
been an object of affection to any part of his people. The 25 
first two Kings of the House of Hanover had neither those 
hereditary rights which have often supplied the defect of 
merit, nor those personal qualities which have often sup- 
plied the defect of title. A prince may be pouplar with 
little virtue or capacity, if he reigns by birthright derived 



16 MACAULAY. 

from a long line of illustrious predecessors. An usurper 
may be popular, if his genius has saved or aggrandized 
the nation which he governs. Perhaps no rulers have in 
our time had a stronger hold on the affection of subjects 
5 than the Emperor Francis, and his son-in-law the Em- 
peror Napoleon. But imagine a ruler with no better title 
than Napoleon, and no better understanding than Francis. 
Eichard Cromwell was such a ruler ; and, as soon as an 
arm was lifted up against him, he fell without a strug- 

10 gle, amidst universal derision. George the First and 
George the Second were in a situation which bore some 
resemblance to that of Richard Cromwell. They were 
saved from the fate of Eichard Cromwell by the strenu- 
ous and able exertions of the Whig party, and by the 

15 general conviction that the nation had no choice but 
between the House of Brunswick and popery. But by no 
class were the Guelphs regarded with that devoted affec- 
tion, of which Charles the First, Charles the Second, and 
James the Second, in spite of the greatest faults, and in 

20 the midst of the greatest misfortunes, received innumer- 
able proofs. Those Whigs who stood by the new dynasty 
so manfully with purse and sword did so on principles 
independent of, and indeed almost incompatible with, 
the sentiment of devoted loyalty. The moderate Tories 

25 regarded the foreign dynasty as a great evil, which must 
be endured for fear of a greater evil. In the eyes of the 
high Tories, the Elector was the most hateful of robbers 
and tyrants. The crown of another was on his head; 
the blood of the brave and loyal was on his hands. Thus, 
during many years, the Kings of England were objects 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 17 

of strong personal aversion to many of their subjects, 
and of strong personal attachment to none. They found, 
indeed, firm and cordial support against the pretender to 
their throne ; but this support was given, not at all for 
their sake, but for the sake of a religious and political 5 
system which would have been endangered by their fall. 
This support, too, they were compelled to purchase by 
perpetually sacrificing their private inclinations to the 
party which had set them on the throne, and which main- 
tained them there. lo 

At the close of the reign of George the Second, the 
feeling of aversion with which the House of Brunswick 
had long been regarded by half the nation had died 
away ; but no feeling of affection to that house had yet 
sprung up. There was little, indeed, in the old King's 15 
character to inspire esteem or tenderness. He was not 
our countryman. He never set foot on our soil till he 
was more than thirty years old. His speech bewrayed 
his foreign origin and breeding. His love for his native 
land, though the most amiable part of his character, was 20 
not likely to endear him to his British subjects. He 
was never so happy as when he could exchange St. 
James's for Hernhausen. Year after year, our fleets 
were employed to convoy him to the Continent, and the 
interests of his kingdom were as nothing to him when 25 
compared with the interests of his Electorate. As to 
the rest, he had neither the qualities which make dulness 
respectable, nor the qualities which make libertinism 
attractive. He had been a bad son and a worse father, 
an unfaithful husband and an ungraceful lover. Not 



18 MACAULAY. 

one magnanimous or humane action is recorded of him ; 
but many instances of meanness, and of a harshness 
whichj but for the strong constitutional restraints under 
which he was placed, might have made the misery of his 
5 people. 

He died ; and at once a new world opened. The 
young King was a born Englishman. All his tastes and 
habits, good or bad, were English. No portion of his 
subjects had anything to reproach him with. Even the 

10 remaining adherents of the House of Stuart could 

. scarcely impute to him the guilt of usurpation. He was 
not responsible for the Revolution, for the Act' of Settle- 
ment, for the suppression of the risings of 1715 and of 
1745. He was innocent of the blood of Derwentwater 

15 and Kilmarnock, of Balmerino and Cameron. Born fifty 
years after the old line had been expelled, fourth in 
descent and third in succession of the Hanoverian 
dynasty, he might plead some show of hereditary right. 
His age, his appearance, and all that was known of his 

20 character, conciliated public favor. He was in the 
bloom of youth ; his person and address were pleasing. 
Scandal imputed to him no vice; and flattery might, 
without any glaring absurdity, ascribe to him many 
princely virtues. 

25 It is not strange, therefore, that the sentiment of 
loyalty, a sentiment which had lately seemed to be as 
much out of date as the belief in witches or the practice 
of pilgrimage, should, from the day of his accession, 
have begun to revive. The Tories in particular, who had 
always been inclined to King-worship, and who had 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 19 

long felt with pain the want of an idol before whom 
they could bow themselves down, were as joyful as the 
priests of Apis, when, after a long interval, they had 
found a new calf to adore. It was soon clear that 
George the Third was regarded by a portion of the 5 
nation with a very different feeling from that which his 
two predecessors had inspired. They had been merely 
First Magistrates, Doges, Stadtholders;-he was emphati- 
cally a King, the anointed of heaven, the breath of his 
people's nostrils. The years of the widowhood and 10 
mourning of the Tory party were over. Dido had kept 
faith long enough to the cold ashes of a former lord ; 
she had at last found a comforter, and recognized the 
vestiges of the old flame. The golden days of Harley 
would return. The Somersets, the Lees, and the Wynd- 15 
hams would again surround the throne. The latitudina- 
rian Prelates, who had not been ashamed to correspond 
with Doddridge and to shake hands with Whiston, would 
be succeeded by divines of the temper of South and 
Atterbury. The devotion which had been so signally 20 
shown to the House of Stuart, which had been proof 
against defeats, confiscations, and proscriptions, which 
perfidy, oppression, ingratitude, could not weary out, 
was now transferred entire to the House of Brunswick. 
If George the Third would but accept the homage of the 25 
Cavaliers and High Churchmen, he should be to them all 
that Charles the First and Charles the Second had been. 
The Prince, whose accession was thus hailed by a 
great party long estranged from his house, had received 
from nature a strong will^ a firmness of temper to which 



20 MACAULAT. 

a harsher name might perhaps be given, and an under- 
standing not, indeed, acute or enlarged, but such as 
qualified him to be a good man of business. But his 
character had not yet fully developed itself. He had 
5 been brought up in strict seclusion. The detractors of 
the Princess Dowager of Wales afilrmed that she had 
kept her children from commerce with society, in order 
that she might hold an undivided empire over their 
minds. She gave a very different explanation of her 

10 conduct. She would gladly, she said, see her sons and 
daughters mix in the world, if they could do so without 
risk to their morals. But the profligacy of the people 
of quality alarmed her. The young men were all rakes ; 
the young women made love, instead of waiting till it 

15 was made to them. She could not bear to expose those 
whom she loved best to the contaminating influence of 
such society. The moral advantages of the system of 
education which formed the Duke of York, the Duke of 
Cumberland, and the Queen of Denmark, may perhaps 

20 be questioned. George the Third was indeed no liber- 
tine ; but he brought to the throne a mind only half 
opened, and was for some time entirely under the influ- 
ence of his mother and of his Groom of the Stole, John 
Stuart, Earl of Bute. 

25 The Earl of Bute was scarcely known, even by name, 
to the country which he was soon to govern. He had 
indeed, a short time after he came of age, been chosen 
to fill a vacancy which in the middle of a Parliament, had 
taken place among the Scotch representative peers. He 
had disobliged the Whig ministers by giving some silent 



THt EABL OF CHATHAM. 21 

votes with the Tories, had consequently lost his seat at 
the next dissolution, and had never been re-elected. 
Near twenty years had elapsed since he had borne any 
part in politics. He had passed some of those years at 
his seat in one of the Hebrides, and from that retirement 5 
he had emerged as one of the household of Prince Fred- 
eric. Lord Bute, excluded from public life, had found 
out many ways of amusing his leisure. He was a toler- 
able actor in private theatricals, and was particularly 
successful in the part of Lothario. A handsome leg, to lo 
which both painters and satirists took care to give promi- 
nence, was among his chief qualifications for the stage. 
He devised quaint dresses for masquerades. He dabbled 
in geometry, mechanics, and botany. He paid some 
attention to antiquities and works of art, and was con- 15 
sidered in his own circle as a judge of painting, archi- 
tecture, and poetry. It is said that his spelling was 
incorrect. But though, in our time, incorrect spelling 
is justly considered as a proof of sordid ignorance, it 
would be unjust to apply the same rule to people who 20 
lived a century ago. The novel of Sir Charles Grandi- 
son was published about the time at which Lord Bute 
made his appearance at Leicester House. Our readers 
may perhaps remember the account which Charlotte 
Grandison gives of her two lovers. One of them, a fash- 25 
ionable baronet who talks French and Italian fluently, 
cannot write a line in his own language without some 
sin against orthography ; the other, who is represented 
as a most respectable specimen of the young aristocracy, 
and something of a virtuoso, is described as spelling 



22 MACAULAY, 

pretty well for a lord. On the whole, the Earl of Bute 
might fairly be called a man of cultivated mind. He 
was also a man of undoubted honor. But his under- 
standing was narrow, and his manners cold. and haughty. 
5 His qualifications for the part of a statesman were best 
described by Frederic, who often indulged in the un- 
princely luxury of sneering at his dependents. " Bute," 
said his royal highness, '^you are the very man to be 
envo}^ at some small proud German court where there is 

10 nothing to do." 

Scandal represented the Groom of the Stole as the 
favored lover of the Princess Dowager. He was un- 
doubtedly her confidential friend. The influence which 
the two united exercised over the mind of the King was 

15 for a time unbounded. The Princess, a woman and a 
foreigner, was not likely to be a judicious adviser about 
affairs of state. The Earl could scarcely be said to have 
served even a novitiate in politics. His notions of govern- 
ment had been acquired in the society which had been 

20 in the habit of assembling round Frederic at Kew and 
Leicester House. That society consisted principally of 
Tories, who had been reconciled to the House of Hanover 
by the civility with which the Prince had treated them, 
and by the hope of obtaining high preferment when he 

25 should come to the throne. Their political creed was a 
peculiar modification of Toryism. It was the creed 
neither of the Tories of the seventeenth nor of the 
Tories of the nineteenth century. It was the creed, not 
of Filmer and Sacheverell, nor of Perceval and Eldon, 
but of the sect of which Bolingbroke may be considered 



THE EAEL OF CHATHAM. 23 

as the chief doctor. This sect deserves commendation 
for having pointed out and justly reprobated some great 
abuses which sprang up during the long domination of 
the Whigs. But it is far easier to point out and repro- 
bate abuses than to propose beneficial reforms : and the 5 
reforms which Bolingbroke proposed would either have 
been utterly inefficient, or would have produced much 
more mischief than they would have removed. 

The devolution had slaved the nation from one class 
of evils, but had at the same time — such is the imper- 10 
fection of all things human — engendered or aggravated 
another class of evils which required new remedies. 
Liberty and property were secure from the attacks of 
prerogative. Conscience was respected. ISTo government 
ventured to infringe any of the rights solemnly recog- 15 
nized by the instrument which had called William and 
Mary to the throne. But it cannot be denied that, under 
the new system, the public interests and the public 
morals were seriously endangered by corruption and 
faction. During the long struggle against the Stuarts, 20 
the chief object of the most enlightened statesmen had 
been to strengthen the House of Commons. The struggle 
was over ; the victory was won ; the House of Commons 
was supreme in the state ; and all the vices which had 
till then been latent in the representative s^^stem were 25 
rapidly developed by prosperity and power. Scarcely 
had the executive government become really responsible 
to the House of Commons, when it began to appear that 
the House of Commons was not really responsible to the 
nation. Many of the constituent bodies were under the 



24 3IACAULAY. 

absolute control of individuals ; many were notoriously 
at the command of the highest bidder. The debates 
were not published. It was very seldom known out of 
doors how a gentleman had voted. Thus, while the 

5 ministry was accountable to the l^arliament, the majority 
of the Parliament was accountable to nobody. In such 
circumstances, nothing could be more natural than that 
the members should insist on being paid for their votes, 
should form themselves into combinations for the purpose 

10 of raising the price of their votes, and should at critical 
conjunctures extort large wages by threatening a strike. 
Thus the Whig ministers of George the First and George 
the Second were compelled to reduce corruption to a 
system, and to practise it on a gigantic scale. 

15 If we are right as to the cause of these abuses, we can 
scarcely be wrong as to the remedy. The remedy was 
surely not to deprive the House of Commons of its 
weight in the state. Such a course would undoubtedly 
have put an end to parliamentary corruption and to 

20 parliamentary factions : for, when votes cease to be of 
importance, they will cease to be bought ; and, when 
knaves can get nothing by combining, they will cease to 
combine. But to destroy corruption and faction by 
introducing despotism would have been to cure bad by 

25 worse. The proper remedy evidently was, to make the 
House of Commons responsible to the nation ; and this 
was to be effected in two ways ; first, by giving publicity 
to parliamentary proceedings, and thus placing every 
member on his trial before the tribunal of public opinion ; 
and secondly, by so reforming the constitution of the 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 25 

House that no man should be able to sit in it who had 
not been returned by a respectable and independent 
body of constituents. 

Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke's disciples recommended 
a very different mode of treating the diseases of the 5 
state. Their doctrine was that a vigorous use of the 
prerogative by a patriot King would at once break all 
factious combinations, and supersede the pretended 
necessity of bribing members of Parliament. The King 
had only to resolve that he would be master, that he 10 
would not be held in thraldom by any set of men, that 
he would take for ministers any persons in whom he had 
confidence, without distinction of party, and that he 
would restrain his servants from influencing by immoral 
means either the constituent bodies or the representative 15 
body. This childish scheme proved that those who pro- 
posed it knew nothing of the nature of the evil with 
which they pretended to deal. The real cause of the 
prevalence of corruption and faction was that a House 
of Commons, not accountable to the people, was more 20 
powerful than the King. Bolingbroke's remedy could be 
applied only by a King more powerful than the House 
of Commons. How was the patriot Prince to govern 
in defiance of the body without whose consent he could 
not equip a sloop, keep a battalion under arms, send an 25 
embassy, or defray even the charges of his own house- 
hold ? Was he to dissolve the Parliament ? And what 
was he likely to gain by appealing to Sudbury and Old 
Sarum against the venality of their representatives ? 
Was he to send out privy seals ? Was he to levy ship- 



26 MACAULAT. 

money ? If so, this boasted reform must commence in 
all probability by civil war, and, if consummated, must 
be consummated by the establishment of absolute 
monarchy. Or was the patriot King to 'carry the House 

5 of Commons with him in his upright designs ? By 
what means ? Interdicting himself from the use of 
corrupt influence, what motive was he to address to the 
Dodingtons and Winningtons ? Was cupidity, strength- 
ened by habit, to be laid asleep by a few fine sentences 

10 about virtue and union ? 

Absurd as this theory was, it had many admirers, 
particularly among men of letters. It was now to be 
reduced to jjractice ; and the result was, as any man of 
sagacity must have foreseen, the most piteous and ridicu- 

15 lous of failures. 

On the very day of the young King's accession, 
appeared some signs which indicated the approach of a 
great change. The speech which he made to his council 
was not submitted to the cabinet. It was drawn up by 

20 Bute, and contained some expressions which might be 
construed into reflections on the conduct of affairs dur- 
ing the late reign. Pitt remonstrated, and begged that 
these expressions might be softened down in the printed 
copy; but it was not till after some hours of alterca- 

25 tion that Bute yielded ; and, even after Bute had yielded, 
the King affected to hold out till the following after- 
noon. On the same day on which this singular contest 
took place, Bute was not only sworn of the privy 
council, but introduced into the cabinet. 

Soon after this, Lord Holdernesse, one of the Secre- 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 27 

taries of State, in pursuance of a plan concerted with, 
the court, resigned the seals. Bute was instantly 
appointed to the vacant place. A general election 
speedily followed, and the new Secretary entered Parlia- 
ment in the only way in which he then could enter it, c 
as one of the sixteen representative peers of Scotland.^ 

Had the ministers been firmly united it can scarcely 
be doubted that they would have been able to withstand 
the court. The parliamentary influence of the Whig 
aristocracy, combined with the genius, the virtue, and 10 
the fame of Pitt, would have been irresistible. But 
there had been in the cabinet of George the Second 
latent jealousies and enmities, which now began to show 
themselves. Pitt had been estranged from his old ally 
Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Some of the 15 
ministers were envious of Pitt's popularity. Others 
were, not altogether without cause, disgusted by his 
imperious and haughty demeanor. Others, again, were 
honestly opposed to some parts of his policy. They 
admitted that he had found the country in the depths of 20 
humiliation, and had raised it to the height of glor}^ : 
they admitted that he had conducted the war with 
energy, ability, and splendid success ; but they began to 
hint that the drain on the resources of the state was 
unexampled, and that the public debt was increasing 25 
with a speed at which Montague or Godolphin would 
have stood aghast. Some of the acquisitions made by 

1 In the reign of Anne, the House of Lords had resolved that under 
the 23d article of Union, no Scotch peer could be created a peer of 
Great Britain. This resolution was not annulled till the year 1782. 



28 MACAULAY. 

our fleets and armies were, it was acknowledged, profit- 
able as well as honorable ; but, now that George the 
Second was dead, a courtier might venture to ask why 
England was to become a party in a dispute between 
5 two German powers. What was it to her whether the 
House of Haps burg or the Housie of Brandenburg ruled 
in Silesia ? Why were the best English regiments 
fighting on the Main ? Why were the Prussian battal- 
ions paid with English gold ? The great minister 

10 seemed to think it beneath him to calculate the price of 
victory. As long as the Tower guns were fired, as the 
streets were illuminated, as French banners were carried 
in triumph through London, it was to him matter of 
indifference to what extent the public burdens were 

15 augmented. Nay, he seemed to glory in the magnitude 
of those sacrifices which the people, fascinated by his 
eloquence and success, had too readily made, and would 
long and bitterly regret. There was no check on waste 
or embezzlement. Our commissaries returned from the 

20 camp of Prince Ferdinand to buy boroughs, to rear 
palaces, to rival the magnificence of the old aristocracy 
of the realm. Already had we borrowed, in four years 
of war, more than the most skilful and economical gov- 
ernment would pay in forty years of peace. But the 

25 prospect of peace was as remote as ever. It could not 
be doubted that France, smarting and prostrate, would 
consent to fair terms of accommodation ; but this was 
not what Pitt wanted. War had made him powerful 
and popular ; with war, all that was brightest in his life 
was associated: for war his talents were peculiarly 



THE EABL OF CHATHAM. 29 

fitted. He had at length begun to love war for its own 
sake, and was more disposed to quarrel with neutrals 
than to make peace with enemies. 

Such were the views of the Duke of Bedford and of 
the Earl of Hardwicke ; but no member of the govern- 5 
ment held these opinions so strongly as George Gren- 
ville, the treasurer of the navy. George Grenville was 
brother-in-law of Pitt, and had always been reckoned 
one of Pitt's personal and political friends. But it is 
difficult to conceive two men of talents and integrity 10 
more utterly unlike each other. Pitt, as his sister often 
said, knew nothing accurately except Spenser's Fairy 
Queen. He had never applied himself steadily to any 
branch of knowledge. He was a wretched financier. 
He never became familiar even with the rules of that 15 
House of which he was the brightest ornament. He 
had never studied public law as a system ; and was, 
indeed, so ignorant of the whole subject, that George 
the Second, on one occasion, complained bitterly that a 
man who had never read Vattel should presume to 20 
undertake the direction of foreign affairs. But these 
defects were more than redeemed by high and rare gifts, 
by a strange power of inspiring great masses of men 
with confidence and affection, by an eloquence which 
not only delighted the ear, but stirred the blood, and 25 
brought tears into the eyes, by originality in devising 
plans, by vigor in executing them. Grenville, on the 
other hand, was by nature and habit a man of details. 
He had been bred a lawyer ; and he had brought the 
industry and acuteness of the Temple into official and 



30 MACAULAT. 

parliamentary life. He was supposed to be intimately 
acquainted with the whole fiscal system of the country. 
He had paid especial attention to the law of Parliament, 
and was so learned in all things relating to the privi- 
5 leges and orders of the House of Commons that those 
who loved him least pronounced him the only person 
competent to succeed Onslow in the Chair. His 
speeches were generally instructive, and sometimes, 
from the gravity and earnestness with which he spoke, 

10 even impressive, but never brilliant, and generally 
tedious. Indeed, even when he was at the head of 
affairs, he sometimes found it difficult to obtain the ear 
of the House. In disposition as well as in intellect, he 
differed widely from his brother-in-law. Pitt was 

15 utterly regardless of money. He would scarcely stretch 
out his hand to take it ; and, when it came, he threw it 
away with childish profusion. Grenville, though strictly 
upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a 
man of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated 

20 by success and popularity, keenly sensible of injury, 
but prompt to forgive ; Grenville's character was stern, 
melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing was more re- 
markable in him than his inclination always to look 
on the dark side of things. He was the raven of the 

25 House of Commons, always croaking defeat in the midst 
of triumphs, and bankruptcy with an overflowing ex- 
chequer. Burke, with general applause, compared him, 
in a time of quiet and plenty, to the evil spirit whom 
Ovid described looking down on the stately temples and 
wealthy haven of Athens, and scarce able to refrain 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 31 

from weeping because she could find nothing at which 
to weep. Such a man was not likely to be popular. 
But to unpopularity Grenville opposed a dogged deter- 
mination, which sometimes forced even those who 
hated him to respect him. 5 

It was natural that Pitt and Grenville being such as 
they were, should take very different views of the situa- 
tion of affairs. Pitt could see nothing but the trophies ; 
Grenville could see nothing but the bill. Pitt boasted 
that England was victorious at once in America, in India, lo 
and in Germany, the umpire of the Continent, the mis- 
tress of the sea. Grenville cast up the subsidies, sighed 
over the army extraordinaries, and groaned in spirit to 
think that the nation had borrowed eight millions in one 
year. 15 

With a ministry thus divided it was not difficult for 
Bute to deal. Legge was the first who fell. He had 
given offence to the young King in the late reign, by 
refusing to support a creature of Bute at a Hampshire 
election. He was now not only turned out, but in the 20 
closet, when he delivered up his seal of office, was treated 
with gross incivility. 

Pitt, who did not love Legge, saw this event with 
indifference. But the danger was now fast approaching 
himself. Charles the Third of Spain had early conceived 25 
a deadly hatred of England. Twenty years before, when 
he was King of the Two Sicilies, he had been eager to 
join the coalition against Maria Theresa. But an English 
fleet had suddenly appeared in the Bay of Xaples. An 
English captain had landed, had proceeded to the palace, 



32 MACAULAT. 

had laid a watch on the table, and had told his majesty 
that, within an hour, a treaty of neutrality must be 
signed, or a bombardment would commence. The treaty 
was signed ; the squadron sailed out of the bay twenty- 

5 four hours after it had sailed in ; and from that day 
the ruling passion of the humbled Prince was aversion 
to the English name. He was at length in a situa- 
tion in which he might hope to gratify that passion. He 
had recently become King of Spain and the Indies. He 

10 saw, with envy and apprehension, the triumphs of our 
navy, and the rapid extension of our colonial Empire. 
He was a Bourbon, and sympathized with the distress of 
the house from which he sprang. He was a Spaniard ; 
and no Spaniard could bear to see Gibraltar and Minorca 

15 in the possession of a foreign power. Impelled by such 
feelings, Charles concluded a secret treaty with France. 
By this treaty, known as the Family Compact, the two 
powers bound themselves, not in express words, but by 
the clearest implication, to make war on England in com- 

20 mon. Spain postponed the declaration of hostilities only 
till her fleet, laden with the treasures of America, should 
have arrived. 

The existence of the treaty could not be kept a secret 
from Pitt. He acted as a man of his capacity and energy 

25 might be expected to act. He at once proposed to declare 
war against Spain, and to intercept the American fleet. 
He had determined, it is said, to attack without delay 
both Havanna and the Philippines. 

His wise and resolute counsel was rejected. Bute was 
foremost in opposing it, and was supported by almost 



THE EABL OF CHATHAM. 33 

the whole cabinet. Some of the ministers doubted, or 
affected to doubt, the correctness of Pitt's intelligence ; 
some shrank from the responsibility of advising a course 
so bold and decided as that which he proposed; some 
were weary of his ascendency, and were glad to be rid of 5 
him on any pretext. One only of his colleagues agreed 
with him, his brother-in-law, Earl Temple. 

Pitt and Temple resigned their offices. To Pitt the 
young King behaved at parting in the most gracious 
manner. Pitt who, proud and fiery every where else, 10 
was always meek and humble in the closet, was moved 
even to tears. The King and the favorite urged him to 
accept some substantial mark of royal gratitude. Would 
he like to be appointed governor of Canada ? A salary 
of five thousand pounds a year should be annexed to the 15 
office. Eesidence would not be required. It was true 
that the governor of Canada, as the law then stood, could 
not be a member of the House of Commons. But a bill 
should be brought in, authorizing Pitt to hold his gov- 
ernment together with a seat in Parliament, and in the 20 
preamble should be set forth his claims to the gratitude 
of his country. Pitt answered, with all delicacy, that 
his anxieties were rather for his wife and family than 
for himself, and that nothing would be so acceptable to 
him as a mark of royal goodness which might be bene- 25 
ficial to those who were dearest to him. The hint was 
taken. The same Gazette which announced the retire- 
ment of the Secretary of State announced also that, in 
consideration of his great public services, his wife had 
been created a peeress in her own right, and that a pen- 



34 MACAULAY. 

sion of three thousand pounds a year, for three lives, had 
been bestowed on himself. It was doubtless thought 
that the rewards and honors conferred on the great min- 
ister would have a conciliatory effect on the public mind. 

5 Perhaps, too, it was thought that his popularity, which 
had partly arisen from the contempt which he had always 
shown for money, would be damaged by a pension ; and, 
indeed, a crowd of libels instantly appeared, in which he 
was accused of having sold his country. Many of his 

10 true friends thought that he would have best consulted 
the dignity of his character by refusing to accept any 
pecuniary reward from the court. Nevertheless, the gen- 
eral opinion of his talents, virtues, and services, remained 
unaltered. Addresses were presented to him from sev- 

15 eral large towns. London showed its admiration and 
affection in a still more marked manner. Soon after his 
resignation came the Lord Mayor's day. The King and 
the royal family dined at Guildhall. Pitt was one of the 
guests. The young Sovereign, seated by his bride in his 

20 state coach, received a remarkable lesson. He was 
scarcely noticed. All eyes were fixed on the fallen min- 
ister ; all acclamations directed to him. The streets, the 
balconies, the chimney tops, burst into a roar of delight 
as his chariot passed by. The ladies waved their hand- 

25 kerchiefs from the windows. The common people clung 
to the wheels, shook hands with the footmen, and even 
kissed the horses. Cries of " No Bute ! " " No Newcastle 
salmon ! " were mingled with the shouts of " Pitt for- 
ever ! " When Pitt entered Guildhall, he was welcomed 
by loud huzzas and clapping of hands, in which the very 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 35 

magistrates of the city joined. Lord Bute, in the mean 
time, was hooted and pelted through Cheapside, and would, 
it was thought, have been in some danger, if he had not 
taken the precaution of surrounding his carriage with a 
strong body guard of boxers. Many persons blamed the 5 
conduct of Pitt on this occasion as disrespectful to the 
King. Indeed, Pitt himself afterwards owned that he had 
done wrong. He was led into this error, as he was after- 
wards led into more serious errors, by the influence of his 
turbulent and mischievous brother-in-law, Temple. lo 

The events which immediately followed Pitt's retire- 
ment raised his fame higher than ever. War with Spain 
proved to be, as he had predicted, inevitable. News came 
from the West Indies that Martinique had been taken 
by an expedition which he had sent forth. Havanna 15 
fell ; and it was known that he had. planned an attack on 
Havanna. Manilla capitulated ; and it was believed that 
he had meditated a blow against Manilla. The American 
fleet, which he had proposed to intercept, had unloaded 
an immense cargo of bullion in the haven of Cadiz, before 20 
Bute could be convinced that the Court of Madrid really 
entertained hostile intentions. 

The session of Parliament which followed Pitt's retire- 
ment passed over without any violent storm. Lord Bute 
took on himself the most prominent part in the House 25 
of Lords. He had become Secretary of State, and 
indeed prime minister, without having once opened his 
lips in public, except as an actor. There was, therefore, 
no small curiosity to know how he would acquit himself. 
Members of the House of Commons crowded the bar of 



36 MACAULAY. 

the Lords, and covered the steps of the throne. It was 
generally expected that the orator would break down ; 
but his most malicious hearers were forced to own that 
he had made a better figure than they expected. They, 

5 indeed, ridiculed his action as theatrical, and his style 
as tumid. They were especially amused by the long 
pauses which, not from hesitation, but from affectation, 
he made at all the emphatic words, and Charles Towns- 
hend cried out, " Minute guns ! " The general opinion 

10 however was, that, if Bute had been early practised in 
debate, he might have become an impressive speaker. 

In the Commons, George Grenville had been entrusted 
with the lead. The task was not, as yet, a very difficult 
one : for Pitt did not think fit to raise the standard of 

15 opposition. His speeches at this time were distinguished, 
not only by that eloquence in which he excelled all his 
rivals, but also by a temperance and a modesty which 
had too often been wanting to his character. When war 
was declared against Spain, he justly laid claim to the 

20 merit of having foreseen what had at length become 
manifest to all, but he carefully abstained from arrogant 
and acrimonious expressions ; and this abstinence was 
the more honorable to him, because his temper, never 
very placid, was now severely tried, both by gout and 

25 by calumny. The courtiers had adopted a mode of war- 
fare, which was soon turned with far more formidable 
effect against themselves. Half the inhabitants of the 
Grub Street garrets paid their milk scores and got their 
shirts out of pawn, by abusing Pitt. His German war, 
his subsidies, his pension, his wife's peerage, were shin 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 37 

of beef and gin, blankets and baskets of small coal, to 
the starving poetasters of the Fleet. Even in the House 
of Commons, he was, on one occasion during this session, 
assailed with an insolence and malice which called forth 
the indignation of men of all parties; but he endured 5 
the outrage with majestic patience. In his younger 
days he had been but too prompt to retaliate on those 
who attacked him; but now, conscious of his great ser- 
vices, and of the space which he filled in the eyes of all 
mankind, he would not stoop to personal squabbles. 10 
" This is no season," he said, in the debate on the Span- 
ish war, " for altercation and recrimination. A day has 
arrived when every Englishman should stand forth for 
his country. Arm the whole ; be one people ; forget 
everything but the public. I set you the example. 15 
Harassed by slanderers, sinking under pain and disease, 
for the public I forget both my wrongs and my infirmi- 
ties ! " On a general review of his life, we are inclined 
to think that his genius and virtue never shone with so 
pure an effulgence as during the session of 1762. 20 

The session drew towards the close; and Bute, em- 
boldened by the acquiescence of the Houses, resolved to 
strike another great blow, and to become first minister 
in name as well as in reality. That coalition, which a 
few months before had seemed all powerful, had been 25 
dissolved. The retreat of Pitt had deprived the govern- 
ment of popularity. Newcastle had exulted in the fall 
of the illustrious colleague whom he envied and dreaded, 
and had not foreseen that his own doom was at hand. 
He still tried to flatter himself that he was at the head 



38 MACAULAY. 

of the government ; but insults heaped on insults at 
length undeceived him. Places which had always been 
considered as in his gift, were bestowed without any 
reference to him. His expostulations only called forth 
5 significant hints that it w^as time for him to retire. One 
day he pressed on Bute the claims of a Whig Prelate to 
the archbishopric of York. "If your grace thinks so 
highly of him," answered Bute, " I wonder that you did 
not promote him when you had the power.'' Still the 

10 old man clung with a desperate grasp to the wreck. 
Seldom, indeed, have Christian meekness and Christian 
humility equalled the meekness and humility of his 
patient and abject ambition. At length he was forced 
to understand that all was over. He quitted that Court 

15 where he had held high office during forty-five years, 
and hid his shame and regret among the cedars of Clare- 
mont. Bute became first lord of the treasury. 

The favorite had undoubtedly committed a great 
error. It is impossible to imagine a tool better suited 

20 to his purposes than that which he thus threw away, or 
rather put into the hands of his enemies. If Newcastle 
had been suffered to play at being first minister, Bute 
might securely and quietly have enjoyed the substance 
of power. The gradual introduction of Tories into all 

25 the departments of the government might have been 
effected without any violent clamor, if the chief of the 
great Whig connection had been ostensibly at the head 
of affairs. This was strongly represented to Bute by 
Lord Mansfield, a man who may justly be called the 
father of modern Toryism, of Toryism modified to suit 



THE EABL OF CHATHAM. 39 

an order of things under which the House of Commons 
is the most powerful body in the state. The theories 
which had dazzled Bute could not impose on the fine 
intellect of Mansfield. The temerity with which Bute 
provoked the hostility of powerful and deeply rooted 5 
interests, was displeasing to Mansfield's cold and timid 
nature. Expostulation, however, was vain. Bute was 
impatient of advice, drunk with success, eager to be, in 
show as well as in reality, the head of the government. 
He had engaged in an undertaking in which a screen lo 
was absolutely necessary to his success, and even to his 
safety. He found an excellent screen ready in the very 
place where it was most needed ; and he rudely pushed 
it away. 

And now the new system of government came into 15 
full operation. For the first time since the accession of 
the House of Hanover, the Tory party was in the ascen- 
dant. The prime minister himself was a Tory. Lord 
Egremont, who had succeeded Pitt as Secretary of State, 
was a Tory, and the son of a Tory. Sir Francis Dash- 20 
wood, a man of slender parts, of small experience, and 
of notoriously immoral character, was made Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, for no reason that could be imagined, 
except that he was a Tory, and had been a Jacobite. 
The royal household was filled with men whose favorite 25 
toast, a few years before, had been the King over the 
water. The relative position of the two great national 
seats of learning was suddenly changed. The Univer- 
sity of Oxford had long been the chief seat of disaffec- 
tion. In troubled times, the High Street had been lined 



40 MACAULAT. 

with bayonets ; the colleges had been searched by the 
King's messengers. Grave doctors were in the habit of 
talking very Ciceronian treason in the theatre ; and the 
undergraduates drank bumpers to Jacobite toasts, and 
5 chanted Jacobite airs. Of four successive Chancellors 
of the University, one had notoriously been in the Pre- 
tender's service ; the other three were full}^ believed to 
be in secret correspondence with the exiled family. 
Cambridge had therefore been especially favored by the 

10 Hanoverian Princes, and had shown herself grateful for 
their patronage. George the First had enriched her 
library ; George the Second had contributed munificently 
to her Senate House. Bishoprics and deaneries were 
showered on her children. Her Chancellor was New- 

15 castle, the chief of the Whig aristocracy ; her High 
Steward was Hardwicke, the Whig head of the law. 
Both her burgesses had held office under the Whig min- 
istry. Times had now changed. The University of 
Cambridge was received at St. James's with comparative 

20 coldness. The answers to the addresses of Oxford were 
all graciousness and warmth. 

The watchwords of the new government were preroga- 
tive and purity. The sovereign was no longer to be a 
puppet in the hands of Siuj subject, or of any combina- 

25 tion of subjects. George the Third would not be forced 
to take ministers whom he disliked, as his grandfather 
had been forced to take Pitt. George the Third would 
not be forced to part with any whom he delighted to 
honor, as his grandfather had been forced to part with 
Carteret. At the same time, the system of bribery 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 41 

which had grown up during the late reigns was to cease. 
It was ostentatiously proclaimed that, since the accession 
of the young King, neither constituents nor representa- 
tives had been bought with the secret service money. 
To free Britain from corruption and oligarchical cabals, 5 
to detach her from continental connections, to bring the 
bloody and expensive war with France and Spain to a 
close, such were the specious objects which Bute pro- 
fessed to procure. 

Some of these objects he attained. England withdrew, lo 
at the cost of a deep stain on her faith, from her German 
connections. The war with France and Spain was ter- 
minated by a peace, honorable indeed and advantageous 
to our country, yet less honorable and less advantageous 
than might have been expected from a long and almost 15 
unbroken series of victories, by land and sea, in every 
part of the world. But the only effect of Bute's domes- 
tic administration was to make faction wilder, and cor- 
ruption fouler than ever. 

The mutual animosity of the Whig and Tory parties 20 
had begun to languish after the fall of Walpole, and had 
seemed to be almost extinct at the close of the reign of 
George the Second. It now revived in all its force. 
Many Whigs, it is true, were still in office. The Duke 
of Bedford had signed the treaty with France. The 25 
Duke of Devonshire, though much out of humor, still 
continued to be Lord Chamberlain. Grenville, who led 
the House of Commons, and Fox, who still enjoyed in 
silence the immense gains of the Pay Office, had always 
been regarded as strong Whigs. But the bulk of the 



42 MACAULAY. 

party throughout the country regarded the new minister 
with abhorrence. There was, indeed, no want of popular 
themes for invective against his character. He Avas a 
favorite ; and favorites have always been odious in this 

5 country. No mere favorite had been at the head of the 
government since the dagger of Felton had reached the 
heart of the Duke of Buckingham. After that event the 
most arbitrary and the most frivolous of the Stuarts had 
felt the necessity of confiding the chief direction of af- 

10 fairs to men who had given some proof of parliamentary 
or official talent Strafford, Falkland, Clarendon, Clif- 
ford, Shaftesbury, Lauderdale, Danby, Temple, Halifax, 
Eochester, Sunderland, whatever their faults might be, 
were all men of acknowledged' ability. They did not owe 

15 their eminence merely to the favor of the sovereign. 
On the contrary, they owed the favor of the sovereign to 
their eminence. Most of them, indeed, had first attracted 
the notice of the court by the capacity and vigor which 
they had shown in opposition. The Eevolution seemed 

20 to have forever secured the state against the domination 
of a Carr or a Villiers. Now, however, the personal re- 
gard of the King had at once raised a man who had seen 
nothing of public business, who had never opened his 
lips in Parliament, over the heads of a crowd of eminent 

25 orators, financiers, diplomatists. From a private gentle- 
man, this fortunate minion had at once been turned into 
a Secretary of State. He had made his maiden speech 
when at the head of the administration. The vulgar re- 
sorted to a simple explanation of the phenomenon, and 

. the coarsest ribaldry against the Princess Mother was 
scrawled on every wall and sung in every alley. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 43 

This was not all. The spirit of party, roused by im- 
politic provocation from its long sleep, roused in turn a 
still fiercer and more malignant Fury, the spirit of 
national animosity. The grudge of Whig against Tory 
was mingled with the grudge of Englishman against Scot. 5 
The two sections of the great British people had not yet 
been indissolubly blended together. The events of 1715 
and of 1745 had left painful and enduring traces. The 
tradesmen of Cornhill had been in dread of seeing their 
tills and warehouses plundered by barelegged mountain- lo 
eers from the Grampians. They still recollected that 
Black Friday, when the news came that the rebels were 
at Derby, when all the shops in the city were closed, and 
when the Bank of England began to pay in sixpences. 
The Scots, on the other hand, remembered with natural 15 
resentment, tbe severity with, which the insurgents had 
been chastised, the military outrages, the humiliating 
laws, th# heads fixed on Temple Bar, the fires and quar- 
tering blocks on Kennington Common. The favorite did 
not suffer the English to forget from what part of the 20 
island he came. The cry of all the south was that the 
public ofiices, the army, the navy, were filled with 
high-cheeked Drummonds and Erskines, Macdonalds and 
Macgillivrays, who could not talk a Christian tongue, 
and some of whom had but lately begun to wear Christian 25 
breeches. All the old jokes on hills without trees, girls 
without stockings, men eating the food of horses, pails 
emptied from the fourteenth story, were pointed against 
these lucky adventurers. To the honor of the Scots it 
must be said, that their prudence and their pride re- 



44 MACAULAY. 

strained them from retaliation. Like the princess in the 
Arabian tale, they stopped their ears tight, and, unmoved 
by the shrillest notes of abuse, walked on, without once 
looking round, straight towards the Golden Fountain. 

5 Bute, who had always been considered as a man of taste 
and reading, aifected, from the moment of his elevation, 
the character of a Maecenas. If he expected to conciliate 
the public by encouraging literature and art, he was 
grievously mistaken. Indeed, none of the objects of his 

10 munificence, with the single exception of Johnson, can 
be said to have been well selected ; and the public, not 
unnaturally, ascribed the selection of Johnson rather to 
the Doctor's political prejudices than to his literary 
merits : for a wretched scribbler named Shebbeare, who 

15 had nothing in common with Johnson except violent 
Jacobitism, and who had stood in the pillory for a libel 
on the Ee volution, was honored with a mark of royal appro- 
bation, similar to that which was bestowed on tjlie author 
of the English Dictionary, and of the Vanity of Human 

20 Wishes. It was remarked that Adam, a Scotchman, was 
the court architect, and that Kamsay, a Scotchman, was 
the court painter, and was preferred to Reynolds. Mallet, 
a Scotchman, of no high literary fame, and of infamous 
character, partook largely of the liberality of the govern- 

25 ment. John Home, a Scotchman, was rewarded for the 
tragedy of Douglas, both with a pension and with a sine- 
cure place. But, when the author of the Bard, and of the 
Elegy in a Country Churchyard, ventured to ask for a 
Professorship, the emoluments of which he much needed, 
and for the duties of which he was, in many respects, 



TBiJ EARl OF CHATHAM. 45 

better qualified than any man living, he was refused; 
and the post was bestowed on the pedagogue under whose 
care the favorite's son-in-law. Sir James Lowther, had 
made such signal proficiency in the graces and in the 
humane virtues. 5 

Thus, the first lord of the treasury was detested by 
many as a Tory, by many as a favorite, and by many as 
a Scot. All the hatred which flowed from these various 
sources soon mingled, and was directed in one torrent of 
obloquy against the treaty of peace. The Duke of Bed- 10 
ford, who had negotiated that treaty, was hooted through 
the streets. Bute was attacked in his chair, and was 
with difficulty rescued by a troop of the guards. He 
could hardly walk the streets in safety without disguising 
himself. A gentleman who died not many years ago 15 
used to say that he once recognized the favorite Earl in 
the piazza of Covent Garden, muffled in a large coat, and 
with a hat and wig drawn down over his brows. His 
lordship's est^iblished type with the mob was a jack boot, 
a wretched pun on his Christian name and title. A jack 20 
boot, generally accompanied by a petticoat, was sometimes 
fastened on a gallows, and sometimes committed to the 
flames. Libels on the court, exceeding in audacity and 
rancor any that had been published for many years, now 
appeared daily both in prose and verse. Wilkes, with 25 
lively insolence, compared the mother of George the 
Third to the mother of Edward the Third, and the 
Scotch minister to the gentle Mortimer. Churchill, with 
all the energy of hatred, deplored the fate of his country, 
invaded by a new race of savages, more cruel and raven- 



46 MACAU LAY. 

ous than the Picts or the Danes, the poor, proud children 
of Leprosy and Hunger. It is a slight circumstance, but 
deserves to be recorded, that in this year pamphleteers 
first ventured to print at length the names of the great 

5 men whom they lampooned. George the Second had 

always been the K . His ministers had been Sir 

R W , Mr. P , and the Duke of N . But 

the libellers of George the Third, of the Princess Mother, 
and of Lord Bute did not give quarter to a single vowel. 

10 It was supposed that Lord Temple secretly encouraged 
the most scurrilous assailants of the government. In 
truth, those who knew his habits tracked him as men 
track a mole. It was his nature to grub underground. 
Whenever a heap of dirt was flung up, it might well be 

15 suspected that he was at work in some foul crooked 
labyrinth below. Pitt turned away from the filthy 
work of opposition, with the same scorn with which he 
had turned away from the filthy work of government. 
He had the magnanimity to proclaim . everywhere the 

20 disgust which he felt at the. insults offered by his own 
adherents to the Scottish nation, and missed no oppor- 
tunity of extolling the courage and fidelity which the 
Highland regiments had displayed through the whole 
war. But, though he disdained to use any but lawful 

25 and honorable weapons, it was well known that his fair 
blows were likely to be far more formidable than the 
privy thrusts of his brother-in-law's stiletto. 

Bute's heart began to fail him. The Houses were 
about to meet. The treaty would instantly be the sub- 
ject of discussion. It was probable that Pitt, the great 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 47 

Whig connection, and the multitude, would all be on 
the same side. The favorite had professed to hold in 
abhorrence those means by which preceding ministers 
had kept the House of Commons in good humor. He 
now began to think that he had been too scrupulous. 5 
His Utopian visions were at an end. It was necessary, 
not only to bribe, but to bribe more shamelessly and 
flagitiously than his predecessors, in order to make up 
for lost time. A majority must be secured, no matter 
by what means. Could Grenville do this ? Would he 10 
do it ? His firmness and ability had not yet been tried 
in any perilous crisis. He had been generally regarded 
as a humble follower of his brother Temple, and of his 
brother-in-law Pitt, and was supposed, though with little 
reason, to be still favorably inclined towards them. 15 
Other aid must be called in. And where was other aid 
to be found ? 

There was one man, whose sharp and manly logic had 
often in debate been found a match for the lofty and 
impassioned rhetoric of Pitt, whose talents for jobbing 20 
were not inferior to his talents for debate, whose daunt- 
less spirit shrank from no difficulty or danger, and who 
was as little troubled with scruples as with fears. Henry 
Fox, or nobody, could weather the storm which was 
about to burst. Yet was he a person to whom the court, 25 
even in that extremity, was unwilling to have recourse. 
He had always been regarded as a Whig of the Whigs. 
He had been the friend and disciple of Walpole. He 
had long been connected by close ties with William 
Duke of Cumberland. By the Tories he was more hated 



48 MACAVLAY. 

than any man living. So strong was their aversion to 
hiin that when, in the late reign, he had attempted to 
form a party against the Duke of Newcastle, they had 
thrown all their weight into Newcastle's scale. By 

5 the Scots, Fox was abhorred as the confidential friend 
of the conqueror of Culloden. He was, on personal 
grounds, most obnoxious to the Princess Mother. For 
he had, immediately after her husband's death, advised 
the late King to take the education of her son, the heir 

10 apparent, entirely out of her hands. He had recently 
given, if possible, still deeper offence ; for he had in- 
dulged, not without some ground, the ambitious hope 
that his beautiful sister-in-law, the Lady Sarah Lennox, 
might be queen of England. It had been observed that 

15 the King at one time rode every morning by the grounds 
of Holland House, and that, on such occasions, Lady 
Sarah, dressed like a shepherdess at a masquerade, was 
making hay close to the road, which was then separated 
by no wall from the lawn. On account of the part 

20 which Fox had taken in this singular love affair, he was 
the only member of the Privy Council who was not 
summoned to the meeting at which his Majesty an- 
nounced his intended marriage with the Princess of 
Mecklenburg. Of all the statesmen of the age, there- 

25 fore, it seemed that Fox was the last with whom Bute, 
the Tory, the Scot, the favorite of the Princess Mother, 
could, under any circumstances, act. Yet to Fox Bute 
was now compelled to apply. 

Fox had many noble and amiable qualities, which in 
private life shone forth in full lustre, and made him 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 49 

dear to his children, to his dependents, and to his 
friends ; but as a public man he had no title to esteem. 
In him the vices which were common to the whole 
school of Walpole appeared, not perhaps in their worst, 
but certainly in their most prominent form ; for his 5 
parliamentary and official talents made all his faults 
conspicuous. His courage, his vehement temper, his 
contempt for appearances, led him to display much that 
others, quite as unscrupulous as himself, covered with a 
decent veil. He was the most unpopular of the states- 10 
men of his time, not because he sinned more than many 
of them, but because he canted less. 

He felt his unpopularity ; but he felt it after the 
fashion of strong minds. He became, not cautious, but 
reckless, and faced the rage of the whole nation with a 15 
scowl of inflexible defiance. He was born with a sweet 
and generous temper ; but he had been goaded and 
baited into a savageness which was not natural to him, 
and which amazed and shocked those who knew him 
best. Such was the man to whom Bute, in extreme 20 
need, applied for succor. 

That succor Fox was not unwilling to afford. Though 
by no means of an envious temper, he had undoubtedly 
contemplated the success and popularity of Pitt with 
bitter mortification. He thought himself Pitt's match 25 
as a debater, and Pitt's superior as a man of business. 
They had long been regarded as well-paired rivals. They 
had started fair in the career of ambition. They had 
long run side by side. At length Fox had taken the 
lead, and Pitt had fallen behind, Then had come a 



50 MACAULAT. 

sudden turn of fortune, like that in Virgil's foot-race. 
Fox had stumbled in the mire, and had not only been 
defeated, but befouled. Pitt had reached the goal, and 
received the prize. The emoluments of the Pay Office 
5 might induce the defeated statesman to submit in 
silence to the ascendency of his competitor, but could 
not satisfy a mind conscious of great powers, and sore 
from great vexations. As soon, therefore, as a party 
arose adverse to the war and to the supremacy of the 

10 great war minister, the hopes of Pox began to revive. 
His feuds with the Princess Mother, with the Scots, 
with the Tories, he was ready to forget, if, by the 
help of his old enemies, he could now regain the im- 
portance which he had lost, and confront Pitt on equal 

15 terms. 

The alliance was, therefore, soon concluded. Fox 
was assured that, if he would pilot the government out 
of its embarrassing situation, he should be rewarded 
with a peerage, of which he had long been desirous. 

20 He undertook on his side to obtain, by fair or foul 
means, a vote in favor of the peace. In consequence 
of this arrangement he became leader of the House of 
Commons ; and Grenville, stifling his vexation as well 
as he could, sullenly acquiesced in the change. 

25 Fox had expected that his influence would secure to 
the court the cordial support of some eminent Whigs 
who were his personal friends, particularly of the Duke 
of Cumberland and of the Duke of Devonshire. He 
was disappointed, and soon found that, in addition to 
all his other difficulties, he must reckon on the opposi- 



THE EABL OF CHATHAM. 51 

tion of the ablest prince of the blood, and of the great 
house of Cavendish. 

But he had pledged himself to win the battle ; and he 
was not a man to go back. It was no time for squeamish- 
ness. Bute was made to comprehend that the ministry 5 
could be saved only by practising the tactics of Walpole 
to an extent of which Walpole himself would have 
stared. The Pay Office was turned into a mart for 
votes. Hundreds of members were closeted there with 
Fox, and, as there is too much reason to believe, de- 10 
parted carrying with them the wages of infamj?-. It was 
affirmed by persons who had the best opportunities of 
obtaining information, that twenty-five thousand pounds 
were thus paid away in a single morning. The lowest 
bribe given, it was said, was a bank-note for two 15 
hundred pounds. 

Intimidation was joined with corruption. All ranks, 
from the highest to the lowest, were to be taught that 
the King would be obeyed. The Lords Lieutenants of 
several counties were dismissed. The Duke of Devon- 20 
shire was especially singled out as the victim by whose 
fate the magnates of England were to take warning. 
His wealth, rank, and influence, his stainless private 
character, and the constant attachment of his family to 
the House of Hanover did not secure him from gross 25 
personal indignity. It was known that he disapproved of 
the course which the government had taken ; and it was ac- 
cordingly determined to humble the Prince of the Whigs 
as he had been nicknamed by the Princess Mother. He 
went to the palace to pay his duty. " Tell him," said 



52 MACAULAY. 

the King to a page, " that I will not see him." The page 
hesitated. " Go to him," said the King, " and tell him 
those very words." The message was delivered. The 
Duke tore off his gold key, and went away boiling with 
5 anger. His relations who were in office instantly re- 
signed. A few days later, the King called for the list 
of Privy Councillors, and with his own hand struck out 
the Duke's name. 

In this step there was at least courage, though little 

10 wisdom or good nature. But, as nothing was too high 
for the revenge of the court, so also was nothing too 
low. A persecution, such as had never been known be- 
fore, and has never been known since, raged in every 
public department. Great numbers of humble and la- 

15 borious clerks were deprived of their bread, not because 
they had neglected their duties, not because they had 
taken an active part against the ministry, but merely 
because they had owed their situations to the recommen- 
dation of some nobleman or gentleman who was against 

20 the peace. The proscription extended to tidewaiters, to 
gangers, to doorkeepers. One poor man to whom a pen- 
sion had been given for his gallantry in a fight with 
smugglers, was deprived of it because he had been be- 
friended by the Duke of Grafton. An aged widow, who, 

25 on account of her husband's services in the navy, had, 
many years before, been made housekeeper to a public 
office, was dismissed from her situation, because it was 
imagined that she was distantly connected by marriage 
with the Cavendish family. The public clamor, as may 
well be supposed, grew daily louder and louder. But 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 53 

the louder it grew, the more resolutely did Fox go on 
with the work which he had begun. His old friends 
could not conceive what had possessed him. " I could 
forgive," said the Duke of Cumberland, " Fox's political 
vagaries ; but I am quite confounded by his inhumanity. 5 
Surely he used to be the best-natured of men." 

At last Fox went so far as to take a legal opinion on 
the question, whether the patents granted by George the 
Second were binding on George the Third. It is said 
that, if his colleagues had not flinched, he would at 10 
once have turned out the Tellers of the Exchequer and 
Justices in Eyre. 

Meanwhile the Parliament met. The ministers, more 
hated by the people than ever, were secure of a majority, 
and they had also reason to hope that they would have 15 
the advantage in the debates as well as in the divisions ; 
for Pitt was confined to his chamber by a severe attack 
of gout. His friends moved to defer the consideration 
of the treaty till he should be able to attend : but the 
motion was rejected. The great day arrived. The dis- 20 
cussion had lasted some time, when a loud huzza was 
heard in Palace Yard. The noise came nearer and 
nearer, up the stairs, through the lobby. The door 
opened, and from the midst of a shouting multitude came 
forth Pitt, borne in the arms of his attendants. His 25 
face was thin and ghastly, his limbs swathed in flannel, 
his crutch in his hand. The bearers set him down 
within the bar. His friends instantly surrounded him, 
and with their help he crawled to^ his seat near the 
table. In this condition he spoke three hours and a 



54 MACAULAT. 

half against the peace. During that time he was re- 
peatedly forced to sit down and to use cordials. It may 
well be supposed that his voice was faint, and that his 
action was languid, and that his speech, though occasion- 
s' ally brilliant and impressive, was feeble when compared 
with his best oratorical performances. But those who 
remembered what he had done, and who saw what he 
suffered, listened to him with emotions stronger than 
any that mere eloquence can produce. He was unable 

10- to stay for the division, and was carried away from the 
House amidst shouts as loud as those which had an- 
nounced his arrival. 

A large majority approved the peace. The exultation 
of the court was boundless. "Now," exclaimed the 

15 Princess Mother, " my son is really King." The young 
sovereign spoke of himself as freed from the bondage 
in which his grandfather had been held. On one point, 
it was announced, his mind was unalterably made up. 
Under no circumstances whatever should those Whig 

20 grandees, who had enslaved his predecessors, and en- 
deavored to enslave himself, be restored to power. 

This vaunting was premature. The real strength of 
the favorite was by no means proportioned to the number 
of votes which he had, on one particular division, been 

25 able to command. He was soon again in difficulties. 
The most important part of his budget was a tax on 
cider. This measure was opposed, not only by those 
who were generally hostile to his administration, but 
also by many of his supporters. The name of excise 
had always been hateful to the Tories. One of the chief 



TEE EARL OF CHATHAM. 55 

crimes of Walpole, in their eyes, had been his partiality 
for this mode of raising money. The Tory Johnson had 
in his Dictionary given so scurrilous a definition of the 
word Excise, that the Commissioners of Excise had 
seriously thought of prosecuting him. The counties 5 
which the new impost particularly affected had always 
been Tory counties. It was the boast of John Philips, 
the poet of the English vintage, that the Cider-land had 
ever been faithful to the throne, and that all the pruning- 
hooks of her thousand orchards had been beaten into 10 
swords for the service of the ill-fated Stuarts. The 
effect of Bute's fiscal scheme was to produce an union 
between the gentry and yeomanry of the Cider-land and 
the Whigs of the capital. Herefordshire and Worces- 
tershire were in a flame. The city of London, though 15 
not so directly interested, was, if possible, still more 
excited. The debates on this question irreparably dam- 
aged the government. Dashwood's financial statement 
had been confused and absurd beyond belief, and had 
been received by the House with roars of laughter. He 20 
had sense enough to be conscious of his unfitness for 
the high situation which he held, and exclaimed in a 
comical fit of despair, "What shall I do ? The boys will 
point at me in the street, and cry, ^ There goes the worst 
Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever was.' " George 25 
Grenville came to the rescue, and spoke strongly on his 
favorite theme, the profusion with which the late war 
had been carried on. That profusion, he said, had made 
taxes necessary. He called on the gentlemen opposite 
to him to say where they would have a tax laid, and 



56 MACAULAY. 

dwelt on this topic with his usual prolixity. " Let them 
tell me where," he repeated in a monotonous and some- 
what fretful tone. "I say, sir, let them tell me where. 
I repeat it, sir ; I am entitled to say to them. Tell me 
5 where." Unluckily for him, Pitt had come down to the 
House that night, and had been bitterly provoked by 
the reflections thrown on the war. He revenged him- 
self by murmuring, in a whine resembling Grenville's, a 
line of a well known song, " Gentle Shepherd, tell me 

10 where." " If," cried Grenville, " gentlemen are to be 
treated in this way " — Pitt, as was his fashion, when 
he meant to mark extreme contempt, rose deliberately, 
made his bow, and walked out of the House, leaving his 
brother-in-law in convulsions of rage, and everybody 

15 else in convulsions of laughter. It was long before 
Grenville lost the nickname of the Gentle Shepherd. 

But the ministry had vexations still more serious to 
endure. The hatred which the Tories and Scots bore to 
Fox was implacable. In a moment of extreme peril, 

20 they had consented to put themselves under his guid- 
ance. But the aversion with which they regarded him 
broke forth as soon as the crisis seemed to be over. Some 
of them attacked him about the accounts of the Pay 
Office. Some of them rudely interrupted him when 

25 speaking, by laughter and ironical cheers. He was 
naturally desirous to escape from so disagreeable a situ- 
ation, and demanded the peerage which had been 
promised as the reward of his services. 

It was clear that there must be some change in the 
composition of the ministry. But scarcely any, even of 



THE EAEL OF CHATHAM. 57 

those who, from their situation, might be supposed to be 
ill all the secrets of the governmeDt, anticipated what 
really took place. To the amazement of the Parliament 
and the nation, it was suddenly announced that Bute 
had resigned. 5 

Twenty different explanations of this strange step 
were suggested. Some attributed it to profound design, 
and some to sudden panic. Some said that the lampoons 
of the opposition had driven the Earl from the field ; some 
that he had taken office only in order to bring the war to a 10 
close, and had always meant to retire when that object 
had been accomplished. He publicly assigned ill health 
as his reason for quitting business, and privately com- 
plained that he was not cordially seconded by his col- 
leagues, and that Lord Mansfield, in particular, whom 15 
he had himself brought into the cabinet, gave him no 
support in the House of Peers. Mansfield was, indeed, 
far too sagacious not to perceive that Bute's situation 
was one of great peril, and far too timorous to thrust 
himself into peril for the sake of another. The proba- 20 
bility, however, is that Bute's conduct on this occasion, 
like the conduct of most men on most occasions, was 
determined by mixed motives. We suspect that he was 
sick of office ; for this is a feeling much more common 
among ministers than persons who see public life from 25 
a distance are disposed to believe ; and nothing could be 
more natural than that this feeling should take posses- 
sion of the mind of Bute. In general, a statesman 
climbs by slow degrees. Many laborious years elapse 
before he reaches the topmost pinnacle of preferment. 



58 MACAULAT. 

In the earlier part of his career, therefore, he is con- 
stantly lured on by seeing something above him. Dur- 
ing his ascent he gradually becomes inured to the 
annoyances which belong to a life of ambition. By the 
5 time that he has attained the highest point, he has 
become patient of labor and callous to abuse. He is 
kept constant to his vocation, in spite of all its discom- 
forts, at first by hope, and at last by habit. It was not 
so with Bute. His whole public life lasted little more 

10 than two years. On the day on which he became a poli- 
tician he became a cabinet minister. In a few months 
he was, both in name and in show, chief of the adminis- 
tration. Greater than he had been he could not be. If 
what he already possessed was vanity and vexation of 

15 spirit, no delusion remained to entice him onward. He 
had been cloyed with the pleasures of ambition before he 
had been seasoned to its pains. His habits had not been 
such as were likely to fortify his mind against obloquy 
and public hatred. He had reached his forty-eighth 

20 year in dignified ease, without knowing, by personal ex- 
perience, what it was to be ridiculed and slandered. All 
at once, without any previous initiation, he had found 
himself exposed to such a storm of invective and satire 
as had never burst on the head of any statesman. The 

25 emoluments of office were now nothing to him ; for he 
had just succeeded to a princely property by the death 
of his father-in-law. All the honors which could be 
bestowed on him he had already secured. He had 
obtained the Garter for himself, and a British peerage 
for his son. He seems also to have imagined that by 



THE HJARL OF CHATHAM. 59 

quitting the treasury he should escape from danger and 
abuse without really resigning power, and should still 
be able to exercise in private supreme influence over the 
royal mind. 

Whatever may have been his motives, he retired. 5 
Fox at the same time took refuge in the House of Lords ; 
and George Grenville became First Lord of the Treasury 
and Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

We believe that those who made this arrangement 
fully intended that Grenville should be a mere puppet lo 
in the hands of Bute ; for Grenville was as yet very 
imperfectly known even to those who had observed him 
long. He passed for a mere official drudge ; and he had 
all the industry, the minute accuracy, the formality, the 
tediousness, which belong to the character. But he had 15 
other qualities which had not yet shown themselves, 
devouring ambition, dauntless courage, self-confidence 
amounting to presumption, and a temper which could 
not endure opposition. He was not disposed to be any- 
body's tool ; and he had no attachment, political or per- 20 
sonal, to Bute. The two men had, indeed, nothing in 
common, except a strong propensity towards harsh and 
unpopular courses. Their principles were fundamen- 
tally different. Bute was a Tory. Grenville would have 
been very angry with any person who should have 25 
denied his claim to be a Whig. He was more prone to 
tyrannical measures than Bute; but he loved tyranny 
only when disguised under the forms of constitutional 
liberty. He mixed up, after a fashion then not very 
unusual, the theories of the republicans of the seven- 



60 MACAULAY. 

teenth century witli the teclinical maxims of English 
law, and thus succeeded in combining anarchical specu- 
lation with arbitrary practice. The voice of the people 
was the voice of God; but the only legitimate organ 

5 through which the voice of the people could be uttered 
was the Parliament. All power was from the people ; 
but to the Parliament the whole power of the people 
had been delegated. No Oxonian divine had ever, even 
in the years which immediately followed the Restoration, 

10 demanded for the King so abject, so unreasoning a hom- 
age, as Grenville, on what he considered as the purest 
Whig principles, demanded for the Parliament. As he 
wished to see the Parliament despotic over the nation, 
so he wished to see it also despotic over the court. In 

15 his view the prime minister, possessed of the confidence 
of the House of Commons, ought to be Mayor of the 
Palace. The King was a mere Childeric or Chilperic, 
who might well think himself lucky in being permitted 
to enjoy such handsome apartments at Saint James's, 

20 and so fine a park at Windsor. 

Thus the opinions of Bute and those of Grenville 
were diametrically opposed. Nor was there any private 
friendship between the two statesmen. Grenville's 
nature was not forgiving ; and he well remembered how, 

25 a few months before, he had been compelled to yield the 
lead of the House of Commons to Fox. 

We are inclined to think, on the whole, that the worst 
administration which has governed England since the 
Ee volution was that of George Grenville. His public 
acts may be classed under two heads, outrages on the 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 61 

liberty of tlie people, and outrages on the dignity of 
the crown. 

He began by making war on the press. John Wilkes, 
member of Parliament for Aylesbury, was singled out 
for persecution. Wilkes had, till very lately, been 5 
known chiefly as one of the most profane, licentious, 
and agreeable rakes about town. He was a man of 
taste, reading, and engaging manners. His sprightly 
conversation was the delight of green rooms and taverns, 
and pleased even grave hearers when he was sufficiently 10 
under restraint to abstain from detailing the particulars 
of his amours, and from breaking jests on the New 
Testament. His expensive debaucheries forced him to 
have recourse to the Jews. He was soon a ruined man, 
and determined to try his chance as a political adven- 15 
turer. In Parliament, he did not succeed. His speak- 
ing, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested 
his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, 
which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, 
in their own despite, to flatter him. As a writer, he 20 
made a better figure. He set up a weekly paper, called 
the North Briton. This journal, written with some 
pleasantry, and great audacity and impudence, had a 
considerable number of readers. Forty-four numbers 
had been published when Bute resigned ; and, though 25 
almost every number had contained matter grossly 
libellous, no prosecution had been instituted. The forty- 
fifth number was innocent when compared with the 
majority of those which had preceded it, and indeed 
contained nothing so strong as may in our time be found 



62 MACAULAY. 

daily in the leading articles of the Times and Morning 
Chronicle. But Grenville was now at the head of affairs. 
A new spirit had been infused into the administration. 
Authority was to be upheld. The government was 

5 no longer to be braved with impunity. Wilkes was 
arrested under a general warrant, conveyed to the Tower, 
and confined there with circumstances of unusual sever- 
ity. His papers were seized, and carried to the Secre- 
tary of State. These harsh and illegal measures 

10 produced a violent outbreak of popular rage, which was 
soon changed to delight and exultation. The arrest was 
pronounced unlawful by the Court of Common Pleas, in 
which Chief Justice Pratt presided, and the prisoner 
was discharged. This victory over the government was 

15 celebrated with enthusiasm both in London and in the 
cider counties. 

While the ministers were daily becoming more odious 
to the nation, they were doing their best to make them- 
selves also odious to the court. They gave the King 

20 plainly to understand that they were determined not to 
be Lord Bute's creatures, and exacted a promise that no 
secret adviser should have access to the royal ear. They 
soon found reason to suspect that this promise had not 
been observed. They remonstrated in terms less respect- 

25 ful than their master had been accustomed to hear, and 
gave him a fortnight to make his choice between his 
favorite and his cabinet. 

George the Third was greatly disturbed. He had but 
a few weeks before exulted in his deliverance from the 
yoke of the great Whig connection. He had even 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. * 63 

declared that his honor would not permit him ever 
again to admit the members of that connection into his 
service. He now found that he had only exchanged one 
set of masters for another set still harsher and more 
imperious. In his distress he thought on Pitt. From 5 
Pitt it was possible that better terms might be obtained 
than either from Grenville, or from the party of which 
Newcastle was the head. 

Grenville, on his return from an excursion into the 
country, repaired to Buckingham House. He was aston-^io 
ished to find at the entrance a chair, the shape of which 
was well known to him, and indeed to all London. It 
was distinguished by a large boot, made for the purpose 
of accommodating the great Commoner's gouty leg. 
Grenville guessed the whole. His brother-in-law was 15 
closeted with the King. Bute, provoked by what he 
considered as the unfriendly and ungrateful conduct of 
his successors, had himself proposed that Pitt should be 
summoned to the palace. 

Pitt had two audiences on two successive days. What 20 
passed at the first interview led him to expect that the 
negotiation would be brought to a satisfactory close; 
but on the morrow he found the King less complying. 
The best account, indeed the only trustworthy account 
of the conference, is that which was taken from Pitt's 25 
own mouth by Lord Hardwicke. It appears that Pitt 
strongly represented the importance of conciliating those 
chiefs of the Whig party who had been so unhappy as 
to incur the roy.al displeasure. They had, he said, been 
the most constant friends of the House of Hanover. 



64 • MACAULAY. 

Their power was great ; they had been long versed in 
public business. If they were to be under sentence of 
exclusion, a solid administration could not be formed. 
His Majesty could not bear to think of putting himself 
5 into the hands of those whom he had recently chased 
from his court with the strongest marks of anger. " I 
am sorry, Mr. Pitt," he said, " but I see this will not do. 
My honor is concerned. I must support my honor." 
How his Majesty succeeded in supporting his honor, we 

10 shall soon see. 

Pitt retired, and the King was reduced to request the 
ministers, whom he had been on the point of discarding, 
to remain in office. During the two years which fol- 
lowed, Grenville, now closely leagued with the Bedfords, 

15 was the master of the court ; and a hard master he 
proved. He knew that he was kept in place only be- 
cause there was no choice except between himself and 
the Whigs. That under any circumstances the Whigs 
would be forgiven, he thought impossible. The late 

20 attempt to get rid of him had roused his resentment ; 
the failure of that attempt had liberated him from all 
fear. He had never been very courtly. He now begun 
to hold a language, to which, since the days of Cornet 
Joyce and President Bradshaw, no English King had 

25 been compelled to listen. 

In one matter, indeed, Grenville, at the expense of 
justice and liberty, gratified the passions of the court 
while gratifying his own. The persecution of Wilkes 
was eagerly pressed. He had written a j^arody on Pope's 
Essay on Man, entitled the Essay on Woman, and had 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM, 65 

appended to it notes, in ridicule of Warburton's famous 
Commentary. This composition was exceedingly profli- 
gate, but not more so, we think, than some of Pope's 
own works, the imitation of the second satire of the first 
book of Horace, for example ; and, to do Wilkes justice, 5 
he had not, like Pope, given his ribaldry to the world. 
He had merely printed at a private press a very small 
number of copies, which he meant to present to some of 
his boon companions, whose morals were in no more 
danger of being corrupted by a loose book than a negro lo 
of being tanned by a warm sun. A tool of the govern- 
ment, by giving a bribe to the printer, procured a copy 
of this trash, and placed it in the hands of the ministers. 
The ministers resolved to visit Wilkes's offence against 
decorum with the utmost rigor of the law. What share 15 
piety and respect for morals had in dictating this reso- 
lution, our readers may judge from the fact that no 
person was more eager for bringing the libertine poet to 
punishment than Lord March, afterwards Duke of 
Queensberry. On the first day of the session of Parlia- 20 
ment, the book, thus disgracefully obtained, was laid on 
the table of the Lords by the Earl of Sandwich, whom 
the Duke of Bedford's interest had made Secretary of 
State. The unfortunate author had not the slightest 
suspicion that his licentious poem had ever been seen, 25 
except by his printer and by a few of his dissipated 
companions, till it was produced in full Parliament. 
Though he was a man of easy temper, averse from 
danger, and not very susceptible of shame, the surprise, 
the disgrace, the prospect of utter ruin, put him beside 



66 MACAULAT. 

himself. He picked a quarrel with one of Lord Bute's 
dependents, fought a duel, was seriously wounded, and 
when half recovered, fled to France. His enemies had 
now their own way both in the Parliament and in the 

5 King's Bench. He was censured, expelled from the 
House of Commons, outlawed. His works were ordered 
to be burned by the common hangman. Yet was the 
multitude still true to him. In the minds even of many 
moral and religious men, his crime seemed light when 

10 compared with the crime of his accusers. The conduct 
of Sandwich, in particular, excited universal disgust. 
His own vices were notorious ; and, only a fortnight 
before he laid the Essay on Woman before the House of 
Lords, he had been drinking and singing loose catches 

15 with Wilkes at one of the most dissolute clubs in London. 
Shortly after the meeting of Parliament, the Beggar's 
Opera was acted at Covent Garden theatre. When 
Macheath uttered the words, — " That Jemmy Twitcher 
should peach me I own surprised me," — pit, boxes, and 

20 galleries burst into a roar which seemed likely to bring 
the roof down. From that day Sandwich was univer- 
sally known by the nickname of Jemmy Twitcher. The 
ceremony of burning the North Briton was interrupted 
by a riot. The constables were beaten ; the paper was 

25 rescued ; and, instead of it, a jackboot and a petticoat 
were committed to the flames. Wilkes had institutecj 
an action for the seizure of his papers against the 
Undersecretary of State. The jury gave a thousand 
pounds damages. But neither these nor any other indi- 
cations of public feeling had power to move Grenville. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 67 

He had the Parliament with him : and, according to his 
political creed, the sense of the nation was to be 
collected from the Parliament alone. 

Soon, however, he found reason to fear that even the 
Parliament might fail him. On the question of the 5 
legality of general warrants, the Opposition, having on 
its side all sound principles, all constitutional authori- 
ties, and the voice of the whole nation, mustered in 
great force, and was joined by many who did not ordi- 
narily vote against the government. On one occasion 10 
the ministry, in a very full House, had a majority of 
only fourteen votes. The storm, however, blew over. 
The spirit of the Opposition, from whatever cause, 
began to flag at the moment when success seemed almost 
certain. The session ended without any change. Pitt, 15 
whose eloquence had shone with its usual lustre in all 
the principle debates, and whose popularity was greater 
than ever, was still a private man. Grenville, detested 
alike by the court and by the people, was still minister. 

As soon as the Houses had risen, Grenville took a 20 
step which proved, even more signally than any of his 
past acts, how despotic, how acrimonious, and how fear- 
less his nature was. Among the gentlemen not ordi- 
narily opposed to the government, who, on the great 
constitutional question of general warrants, had voted 25 
with the minority, was Henry Conway, brother of the 
Earl of Hertford, a brave soldier, a tolerable speaker, 
and a well-meaning, though not a wise or vigorous poli- 
tician. He was now deprived of his regiment, the 
merited reward of faithful and gallant service in two 



6S MACAULAT. 

wars. It was confidently asserted that in tHs violent 
measure the King heartily concurred. 

But whatever pleasure the persecution of Wilkes, or 
the dismissal of Conway, may have given to the royal 
5 mind, it is certain that his Majesty's aversion to his 
ministers increased day by day. Grenville was as frugal 
of the public money as of his own, and morosely re- 
fused to accede to the King's request, that a few thou- 
sand pounds might be expended in buying some open 

10 fields to the west of the gardens of Buckingham House. 
In consequence of this refusal, the fields were soon 
covered with buildings, and the Kiiig and Queen were 
overlooked in their most private walks by the upper 
windows of a hundred houses. Kor was this the worst. 

15 Grenville was as liberal of words as he was sparing of 
guineas. Instead of explaining himself in that clear, 
concise, and lively manner, which alone could win the 
attention of a young mind new to business, he spoke in 
the closet just as he spoke in the House of Commons. 

20 When he had harangued two hours, he looked at his 
watch, as he had been in the habit of looking at the 
clock opposite the Speaker's chair, apologized for the 
length of his discourse, and- then went on for an hour 
more. The members of the House of Commons can 

25 cough an orator down, or can walk away to dinner ; and 
they were by no means sparing in the use of these 
privileges when Grenville was on his legs. But the 
poor young King had to endure all this eloquence with 
mournful civility. To the end of his life he continued 
to talk with horror of Grenville's orations. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 69 

About this time took place one of the most singular 
events in Pitt's life. There was a certain Sir William 
Pynsent, a Somersetshire baronet of Whig politics, who 
had been a Member of the House of Commons in the 
days of Queen Anne, and had retired to rural privacy 5 
when the Tory party, towards the end of her reign, 
obtained the ascendency in her councils. His manners 
were eccentric. His morals lay under very odious im- 
putations. But his fidelity to his political opinions was 
unalterable. During fifty years of seclusion he con- lo 
tinned to brood over the circumstances which had driven 
him from public life, the dismissal of the Whigs, the 
peace of Utrecht, the desertion of our allies. He now 
thought that he perceived a close analogy between the 
well-remembered events of his youth and the events 15 
which he had witnessed in extreme old age ; between 
the disgrace of Marlborough and the disgrace of Pitt ; 
between the elevation of Harley and the elevation of 
Bute ; between the treaty negotiated by St. John and 
the treaty negotiated by Bedford ; between the wrongs 20 
of the House of Austria in 1712 and the wrongs of the 
House of Brandenburgh in 1762. This fancy took such 
possession of the old man's mind that he determined to 
leave his whole property to Pitt. In this way Pitt un- 
expectedly came into possession of near three thousand 25 
pounds a year. Nor could all the malice of his enemies 
find any ground for reproach in the transaction. Nobody 
could call him a legacy hunter. Nobody could accuse 
him of seizing that to which others had a better claim. 
For he had never in his life seen Sir William; and Sir 



70 MACAU LAY. 

William had left no relation so near as to be entitled to 
form any expectations respecting the estate. 

The fortunes of Pitt seemed to flourish ; but his 
health was worse than ever. We cannot find that, 
5 during the session which began in January 1765, he once 
appeared in Parliament. He remained some months in 
profound retirement at Hayes, his favorite villa, scarcely 
moving except from his armchair to his bed, and from 
his bed to his armchair, and often employing his wife 

10 as his amanuensis in his most confidential correspond- 
ence. Some of his detractors whispered that his in- 
visibility was to be ascribed quite as much to affectation 
as to gout. In truth his character, high and splendid 
as it was, wanted simplicity. With genius which did 

15 not need the aid of stage tricks, and with a spirit which 
should have been far above them, he had yet been, 
through life, in the habit of practising them. It was, 
therefore, now surmised that, having acquired all the 
consideration which could be derived from eloquence 

20 and from great services to the state, he had determined 
not to make himself cheap by often appearing in public, 
but, under the pretext of ill health, to surround himself 
with mystery, to emerge only at long intervals and on 
momentous occasions, and at other times to deliver his 

25 oracles only to a few favored votaries, who were suffered 
to make pilgrimages to his shrine. If such were his 
object, it was for a time fully attained. Never was the 
magic of his name so powerful, never was he regarded 
by his country with such superstitious veneration, as 
during this year of silence and seclusion. 



THE EAIiL OF CHATHAM. 71 

Wliile Pitt was thus absent from Parliament, Gren- 
ville proposed a measure destined to produce a great 
revolution, the effects of which will long be felt by the 
whole human race. We speak of the act for imposing 
stamp duties on the North American colonies. The o 
plan was eminently characteristic of its author. Every 
feature of the parent was found in the child. A timid 
statesman would have shrunk from a step, of which 
Walpole, at a time when the colonies were far less 
powerful, had said, ^' He who shall propose it will be a lO 
much bolder man than I.'' But the nature of Grenville 
was insensible to fear. A statesman of large views 
would have felt that to lay taxes at Westminster on 
New England and New York, was a course opposed, not 
indeed to the letter of the Statute Book, or to any deeis- 15 
ion contained in the Term Eeports, but to the principles 
of good government, and to the spirit of the constitu- 
tion. A statesman of large views would also have felt 
that ten times the estimated produce of the American 
stamps would have been dearly purchased by even a 20 
transient quarrel between the mother country and the 
colonies. But Grenville knew of no spirib of the con- 
stitution distinct from the letter of the law, and of no 
national interests except those which are expressed by 
pounds, shillings, and pence. That his policy might 25 
give birth to deep discontents in all the provinces, from 
the shore of the Great Lakes to the Mexican sea ; that 
France and Spain might seize the opportunity of re- 
venge; that the empire might be dismembered; that the 
debt, that debt with the amount of which he perpetually 



72 MACAULAY. 

reproached Pitt, might, in consequence of his own 
policy, be doubled ; these were possibilities which nevei 
occurred to that small, sharp mind. 

The Stamp Act will be remembered as long as the 

5 globe lasts. But, at the time, it attracted much less 
notice in this country than another Act which is now 
almost utterly forgotten. The King fell ill, and was 
thought to be in a dangerous state. His complaint, we 
believe, was the same which, at a later period, repeat- 

10 edly incapacitated him for the performance of his regal 
functions. The heir-apparent was only two years old. 
It was clearly proper to make provision for the adminis- 
tration of the government, in case of a minority. The 
discussions on this point brought the quarrel between 

15 the court and the ministry to a crisis. The King wished 
to be intrusted with the power of naming a regent by 
will. The ministers feared, or affected to fear, that, if 
this power were conceded to him, he would name the 
Princess Mother, nay, possibly the Earl of Bute. They, 

20 therefore, insisted on introducing into the bill words 
confining the King's choice to the royal family. Having 
thus excluded Bute, they urged the King to let them, in 
the most marked manner, exclude the Princess Dowager 
also. They assured him that the House of Commons 

25 would undoubtedly strike her name out, and by this 
threat they wrung from him a reluctant assent. In a 
few days, it appeared that the representations by which 
they had induced the King to put this gross and public 
affront on his mother were unfounded. The friends of 
the Princess in the House of Commons moved that her 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 73 

name should be inserted. The ministers could not 
decently attack the parent of their master. They hoped 
that the Opposition would come to their help, and put 
on them a force to which they would gladly have yielded. 
But the majority of the Opposition, though hating the 5 
Princess, hated G-renville more, beheld his embarrass- 
ment with delight, and would do nothing to extricate 
him from it. The Princess's name was accordingly 
placed in the list of persons qualified to hold the 
regency. 10 

The King's resentment was now at the height. The 
present evil seemed to him more intolerable than any 
other. Even the junta of Whig grandees could not 
treat him worse than he had been treated by his present 
ministers. In his distress he poured out his whole 15 
heart to his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. The Duke 
was not a man to be loved ; but he was eminently a man 
to be trusted. He had an intrepid temper, a strong 
understanding, and a high sense of honor and duty. As 
a general, he belonged to a remarkable class of captains, 20 
— captains, we mean, whose fate it has been to lose 
almost all the battles-which they have fought, and yet to 
be reputed stout and skilful soldiers. Such captains were 
Coligni and William the Third. We might, perhaps, 
add Marshal Soult to the list. The bravery of the Duke 25 
of Cumberland was such as distinguished him even 
among the princes of his brave house. The indiffer- 
ence with which he rode about amidst musket balls and 
cannon balls was not the highest proof of his fortitude. 
Hopeless maladies, horrible surgical operations, far from 



74 MACAULAY. 

unmanning him, did not even discompose him. With 
courage, he had the virtues which are akin to courage. 
He spoke the truth, was open in enmity and friendship, 
and upright in all his dealings. But his nature was 

5 hard ; and what seemed to him justice was rarely tem- 
pered with mercy. He was, therefore, during many 
years one of the most unpopular men in England. The 
severity with which he had treated the rebels after the 
battle of Culloden, had gained for him the name of the 

10 Butcher. His attempts to introduce into the army of 
England, then in a most disorderly state, the rigorous 
discipline of Potsdam, had excited still stronger disgust. 
Nothing was too bad to be believed of him. Many 
honest people were so absurd as to fancy that, if he were 

15 left Regent during the minority of his nephews, there 
would be another smothering in the Tower. These feel- 
ings, however, had passed away. The Duke had been 
living, during some years, in retirement. The English, 
full of animosity against the Scots, now blamed his 

20 Royal Highness only for having left so many Camerons 
and Macphersons to be made gangers and custom-house 
officers. He was, therefore, at present, a favorite with 
his countrymen, and especially with the inhabitants of 
London. 

25 He had little reason to love the King, and had shown 
clearly, though not obtrusively, his dislike of the system 
which had lately been pursued. But he had high and 
almost romantic notions of the duty which, as a prince 
of the blood, he owed to the head of his house. He 
determined to extricate his nephew from bondage, and 



THE SAUL OF CHAT HAM. 75 

to effect a reconciliation between the Whig party and 
the throne, on terms honorable to both. 

In this mind he set off for Hayes, and was admitted 
to Pitt's sick-room ; for Pitt would not leave his cham- 
ber, and would not communicate with any messenger of 5 
inferior dignity. And now began a long series of errors 
on the part of the illustrious statesman, errors which 
involved his country in difficulties and distresses more 
serious even than those from which his genius had for- 
merly rescued her. His language was haughty, unrea- lO 
sonable, almost unintelligible. The only thiug which 
could be discerned through a cloud of vague and not 
very gracious phrases, was that he would not at that 
moment take office. The truth, we believe, was this. 
Lord Temple, who was Pitt's evil genius, had just formed 15 
a new scheme of politics. Hatred of Bute and of the 
Princess had, it should seem, taken entire possession of 
Temple's soul. He had quarrelled with his brother 
George, because George had been connected with Bute 
and the Princess. Now that George appeared to be the 20 
enemy of Bute and of the Princess, Temple was eager to 
bring about a general family reconciliation. The three 
brothers, as Temple, Grenville, and Pitt, were popularly 
called, might make a ministry, without leaning for aid 
either on Bute or on the Whig connection. With such 2." 
views, Temple used all his influence to dissuade Pitt 
from acceding to the propositions of the Duke of Cum- 
erland. Pitt was not convinced. But Temple had an 
influence over him such as no other person had ever pos- 
sessed. They were very old friends, very near relations. 



76 MACAULAY. 

If Pitt's talents and fame had been useful to Temple, 
Temple's purse had formerly, in times of great need, 
been useful to Pitt. They had never been parted in 
politics. Twice they had come into the cabinet together ; 
5 twice they had left it together. Pitt could not bear to 
think of taking office without his chief ally. Yet he felt 
that he was doing wrong, that he was throwing away a 
great opportunity of serving his country. The obscure 
and unconciliatory style of the answers which he returned 
10 to the overtures of the Duke of Cumberland, may be 
ascribed to the embarrassment and vexation of a mind 
not at peace with itself. It is said that he mournfully 
exclaimed to Temple, — 

" Extinxti te meque, soror, populumque, patresque 
/ Sidonios, urbemque tuam." 

The prediction was but too just. 

Finding Pitt impracticable, the Duke of Cumberland 
advised the King to submit to necessity, and to keep 

20 Grenville and the Bedfords. It was, indeed, not a time 
at which offices could safely be left vacant. The unsettled 
state of the government had produced a general relaxa- 
tion through all the departments of the public service. 
Meetings, which at another time would have been harm- 

25 less, now turned to riots, and rapidly rose almost to the 
dignity of rebellions. The Houses of Parliament were 
blockaded by the Spitalfields weavers. Bedford House 
was assailed on all sides by a furious rabble, and was 
strongly garrisoned with horse and foot. Some people 
attributed tjiese disturbances to the friends of Bute, and 



TEE EABL OF CHATHAM. 77 

some to the friends of Wilkes. But, whatever might be 
the cause, the effect was general insecurity. Under such 
circumstances the King had no choice. With bitter 
feelings of mortification, he informed the ministers that 
he meant to retain them. 5 

They answered by demanding from him a promise on 
his royal word never more to consult Lord Bute. The 
promise was given. They then demanded something 
more. Lord Bute's brother, Mr. Mackenzie, held a 
lucrative office in Scotland. Mr. Mackenzie must be lo 
dismissed. The King replied that the office had been 
given under very peculiar circumstances, and that he had 
promised never to take it away while he lived. Gren- 
ville was obstinate ; and the King, with a very bad grace, 
yielded. 15 

The session of Parliament was over. The triumph of 
the ministers was complete. The King was almost as 
much a prisoner as Charles the First had been, when in 
the Isle of Wight. Such were the fruits of the policy 
which, only a few months before, was represented as 20 
having forever secured the throne against the dictation 
of insolent subjects. 

His Majesty's natural resentment showed itself in 
every look and word. In his extremity he looked wist- 
fully towards that Whig connection, once the object of 25 
his dread and hatred. The Duke of Devonshire, who 
had been treated with such unjustifiable harshness, had 
lately died, and had been succeeded by his son, who was 
still a boy. The King condescended to express his regret 
for what had passed, and to invite the young Duke to 



78 MACAULAT. 

court. The noble youtli came, attended by his uncles, 
and was received with marked graciousness. 

This and many other symptoms of the same kind irri- 
tated the ministers. They had still in store for their 

5 sovereign an insult which would have provoked his 
grandfather to kick them out of the room. Grenville and 
Bedford demanded an audience of him, and read him a 
remonstrance of many pages, which they had drawn up 
with great care. His Majesty was accused of breaking 

10 his word, and of treating his advisers with gross unfair- 
ness. The Princess was mentioned in language by no 
means eulogistic. Hints were thrown out that Bute's 
head was in danger. The King was plainly told that he 
must not continue to show, as he had done, that he dis- 

15 liked the situation in which he was placed, that he must 
frown upon the Opposition, that he must carry it fair 
towards his ministers in public. He several times inter- 
rupted the reading, by declaring that he had ceased to 
hold any communication with Bute. But the ministers, 

20 disregarding his denial, went on ; and the King listened 
in silence, almost choked by rage. When they ceased 
to read, he merely made a gesture expressive of his wish 
to be left alone. He afterwards owned that he thought 
he should have gone into a fit. 

25 Driven to despair, he again had recourse to the Duke 
of Cumberland ; and the Duke of Cumberland again had 
recourse to Pitt. Pitt was really desirous to undertake 
the direction of affairs, and owned, with many dutiful 
expressions, that the terms offered by the King were all 
that any subject could desire. But Temple was imprac- 



TEE EARL OF CHATHAM. 79 

ticable ; and Pitt, with great regret, declared that he 
could not, without the concurrence of his brother-in-law, 
undertake the administration. 

The Duke now saw only one way of delivering his 
nephew. An administration must be formed of the 5 
Whigs in opposition, without Pitt's help. The difficul- 
ties seemed almost insuperable. Death and desertion 
had grievously thinned the ranks of the party lately 
supreme in the state. Those among whom the Duke's 
choice lay might be divided into two classes, men too 10 
old for important offices, and men who had never been 
in any important office before. The cabinet must be com- 
posed of broken invalids or of raw recruits. 

This was an evil, yet not an unmixed evil. If the new 
Whig statesmen had little experience in business and 15 
debate, they were, on the other hand, pure from the taint 
of that political immorality which had deeply infected 
their predecessors. Long prosperity had corrupted that 
great party which had expelled the Stuarts, limited the 
prerogatives of the crown, and curbed the intolerance 20 
of the Hierarchy. Adversity had already produced a 
salutary effect. On the day of the accession of George 
the Third, the ascendency of the Whig party terminated: 
and on that day the purification of the Whig party began. 
The rising chiefs of that party were men of a very differ- 25 
ent sort from Sandys and Winnington, from Sir William 
Yonge and Henry Fox. They were men worthy to have 
charged by the side of Hampden at Chalgrove, or to have 
exchanged the last embrace with Russell on the scaffold 
in Lincoln's Inn Fields. They carried into politics the 



80 MAC A UL AT. 

same high principles of virtue which regulated their 
private dealings, nor would they stoop to promote even 
the noblest and most salutary ends by means which 
honor and probity condemn. Such men were Lord John 

5 Cavendish, Sir George Savile, and others whom we hold 
in honor as the second founders of the Whig party, as 
. the restorers of its pristine health and energy after half 
a century of degeneracy. 

The chief of this respectable band was the Marquess 

10 of Rockingham, a man of splendid fortune, excellent 
sense, and stainless character. He was indeed nervous 
to such a degree that, to the very close of his life, he 
never rose without great reluctance and embarrassment to 
address the House of Lords. But, though not a great 

15 orator, he had in a high degree some of the qualities of 
a statesman. He chose his friends well ; and he had in 
an extraordinary degree the art of attaching them to him 
by ties of the most honorable kind. The cheerful fidelity 
with which they adhered to him through many years of 

20 almost hopeless opposition was less admirable than the 
disinterestedness and delicacy which they showed when 
he rose to power. 

We are inclined to think that the use and the abuse of 
party cannot be better illustrated than by a parallel 

25 between two powerful connections of that time, the 
Rockinghams and the Bedfords. The Rockingham party 
was, in our view, exactly what a party should be. It 
consisted of men bound together by common opinions, 
by common public objects, by mutual esteem. That they 
desired to obtain, by honest and constitutional means, 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 81 

the directiou of affairs they openly avowed. But, though 
often invited to accept the honors and emoluments of 
office, they steadily refused to do so on any conditions 
inconsistent with their principles. The Bedford party, 
as a party, had, as far as we can discover, no principle 5 
whatever. Rigby and Sandwich wanted public money, 
and thought that they should fetch a higher price jointly 
than singly. They therefore acted in concert, and pre- 
vailed on a much more important and a much better man 
than themselves to act with them. lo 

It was to Rockingham that the Duke of Cumberland 
now had recourse. The Marquess consented to take 
the treasury. Newcastle, so long the recognized chief 
of the Whigs, could not well be excluded from the min- 
istry. He was appointed Keeper of the Privy Seal. A 15 
very honest clear-headed country gentlemen, of the 
name of Dowdeswell, became Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer. General Conway, who had served under the 
Duke of Cumberland, and was strongly attached to his 
royal highness, was made Secretary of StatCj with the 20 
lead in the House of Commons. A great Whig noble- 
man, in the prime of manhood, from whom much was at 
that time expected, Augustus Duke of Grafton, was the 
other Secretary. 

The oldest man living could remember no government 25 
so weak in oratorical talents and in official experience. 
The general opinion was, that the ministers might hold 
office during the recess, but that the first day of debate 
in Parliament would be the last day of their power. 
Charles Townshend was asked what he thought of the 



82 MACAULAT. 

new administration. " It is," said he, '^mere lutestring ; 
pretty summer wear. It will never do for the winter." 

At this conjuncture Lord Rockingham had the wis- 
dom to discern the value, and secure the aid, of an ally, 
5 who, to eloquence surpassing the eloquence of Pitt, and 
to industry which shamed the industry of Grenville, 
united an amplitude of comprehension to which neither 
Pitt nor Grenville could lay claim. A young Irishman 
had, some time before, come over to push his fortune in 

10 London. He had written much for the booksellers ; but 
he was best known by a little treatise, in which the 
style and reasoning of Bolingbroke were mimicked with 
exquisite skill, and by a theory, of more ingenuity than 
soundness, touching the pleasures which we receive 

15 from the objects of taste. He had also attained a high 
reputation as a talker, and was regarded by the men of 
letters who supped together at the Turk's Head as the 
only match in conversation for Dr. Johnson. He now 
became private secretary to Lord Eockingham, and was 

20 brought into Parliament by his patron's influence. 
These arrangements, indeed, were not made without 
some difficulty. The Duke of Newcastle, -^ho was 
always meddling and chattering, adjured the first lord of 
the treasury to be on his guard against this adventurer, 

25 whose real name was O'Bourke, and whom his grace 
knew to be a wild Irishman, a Jacobite, a Papist, a 
concealed Jesuit. Lord Eockingham treated the cal- 
umny as it deserved ; and the Whig party was strength- 
ened and adorned by the accession of Edmund Burke. 
The party, indeed, stood in need of accessions ; for it 



THE EAEL OF CHATHAM. 83 

sustained about this time an almost irreparable loss. 
The Duke of Cumberland had formed the government, 
and was its main support. His exalted rank and great 
name in some degree balanced the fame of Pitt. As 
mediator between the Whigs and the Court, he held a 5 
place which no other person could fill. The strength of 
his character supplied that which was the chief defect 
of the new ministry. Conway, in particular, who, with 
excellent intentions and respectable talents, was the 
most dependent and irresolute of human beings, drew 10 
from the counsels of that masculine mind a determina- 
tion not his own. Before the meeting of Parliament 
the Duke suddenly died. His death was generally re- 
garded as the signal of great troubles, and on this ac- 
count, as well as from respect for his personal qualities, 15 
was greatly lamented. It was remarked that the 
mourning in London was the most general ever known, 
and was both deeper and longer than the Gazette had 
prescribed. 

In the mean time, every mail from America brought 20 
alarming tidings. The crop which Grenville had sown, 
his successors had now to reap. The colonies were in a 
state bordering on rebellion. The stamps were burned. 
The revenue officers were tarred and feathered. All 
traffic between the discontented provinces and the 25 
mother country was interrupted. The Exchange of 
London was in dismay. Half the firms of Bristol and 
Liverpool were threatened with bankruptcy. In Leeds, 
Manchester, Nottingham, it was said that three artisans 
out of every ten had been turned adrift. Civil war 



84 MACAULAY. 

seemed to be at hand ; and it could not be doubted that, 
if once the British nation were divided against itself, 
France and Spain would soon take part in the quarrel. 
Three courses Avere open to the ministers. The first 
5 was to enforce the Stamp Act by the sword. This was 
the course on which the King, and Grenville, whom the 
King hated beyond all living men, were alike bent. 
The natures of both were arbitrary and stubborn. They 
resembled each other so much that they could never be 

10 friends ; but they resembled each other also so much 
that they saw almost all important practical questions 
in the same point of view. Neither of them would bear 
to be governed ,by the other; but they were perfectly 
agreed as to the best way of governing the people. 

15 Another course was that which Pitt recommended. 
He held that the British Parliament was not constitu- 
tionally competent to pass a law for taxing the colonies. 
He therefore considered the Stamp Act as a nullity, as 
a document of no more validity than Charles's writ of 

20 ship-money, or James's proclamation dispensing with the 
penal laws. This doctrine seems to us, we must own, to 
be altogether untenable. 

Between these extreme courses lay a third way. The 
opinion of the most judicious and temperate statesmen of 

25 those times was that the British constitution had set no 
limit whatever to the legislative power of the British 
King, Lords, and Commons, over the whole British Em- 
pire. Parliament, they held, was legally competent to 
tax America, as Parliament was legally competent to 
commit any other act of folly or wickedness, to confis- 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 85 

cate the property of all the merchants in Lombard 
Street, or to attaint any man in the kingdom of high 
treason, without examining witnesses against him, or 
hearing him in his own defence. The most atrocious 
act of confiscation or of attainder is just as valid an act 5 
as the Toleration Act or the Habeas Corpus Act. But 
from acts of confiscation and acts of attainder lawgivers 
are bound, by every obligation of morality, systemati- 
cally to refrain. In the same manner ought the British 
legislature to refrain from taxing the American colonies. 10 
The Stamp Act was indefensible, not because it was be- 
yond the constitutional competence of Parliament, but 
because it was unjust and impolitic, sterile of revenue, 
and fertile of discontents. These sound doctrines were 
adopted by Lord Eockingham and his colleagues, and 15 
were, during a long course of years, inculcated by Burke 
in orations, some of which will last as long as the 
English language. 

The winter came ; the Parliament met ; and the state 
of the colonies instantly became the subject of fierce 20 
contention. Pitt, whose health had been somewhat re- 
stored by the waters of Bath, reappeared in the House 
of Commons, and, with ardent and pathetic eloquence, 
not only condemned the Stamp Act, but applauded the 
resistance of Massachusetts and Virginia, and vehemently 25 
maintained, in defiance, we must say, of all reason and of 
all authority, that, according to the British constitution, 
the supreme legislative power does not include the 
power to tax. The language of Grenville, on the other 
hand, was such as Strafford might have used at the 



86 MACAULAY. 

>, 

council table of Charles the First, when news came of 
the resistance to the liturgy at Edinburgh. The col- 
onists were traitors; those who excused them were 
little better. Frigates, mortars, bayonets, sabres, were 
5 the proper remedies for such distempers. 

The ministers occupied an intermediate position ; 
they proposed to declare that the legislative authority 
of the British Parliament over the whole Empire was 
in all cases supreme; and they proposed, at the same 

10 time, to repeal the Stamp Act. To the former measure 
Pitt objected ; but it was carried with scarcely a dissen- 
tient voice. The repeal of the Stamp Act Pitt strongly 
supported; but against the Government was arrayed a 
formidable assemblage of opponents. Grenville and 

15 the Bedfords were furious. Temple, who had now 
allied himself closely with his brother, and separated 
himself from Pitt, was no despicable enemy. This, 
however, was not the worst. The ministry was with- 
out its natural strength. It had to struggle, not only 

20 against its avowed enemies, but against the insidious 
hostility of the King, and of a set of persons who, about 
this time, began to be designated as the King's friends. 

The character of this faction has been drawn by 
Burke with even more than his usual force and vivacity. 

25 Those who know how strongly, through his whole life, 
his judgment was biassed by his passions, may not un- 
naturally suspect that he has left us rather a caricature 
than a likeness ; and yet there is scarcely, in the whole 
portrait, a single touch of which the fidelity is not 
proved by facts of unquestionable authenticity. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 87 

The public generally regarded the King's friends as a 
body of which Bute was the directing soul. It was to 
no purpose that the Earl professed to have done with 
politics, that he absented himself year after year from 
the levee and the drawing-room, that he went to the 5 
north, that he went to Rome. The notion that, in some 
inexplicable manner, he dictated all the measures of the 
court, was fixed in the minds, not only of the multitude, 
but of some who had good opportunities of obtaining 
information, and who ought to have been superior to 10 
vulgar prejudices. Our own belief is that these suspi- 
cions were unfounded, and that he ceased to have any 
communication with the King on political matters some 
time before the dismissal of George Grenville. The 
supposition of Bute's influence is, indeed, by no means 15 
necessary to explain thC' phenomena. The King, in 
1765, was no longer the ignorant and inexperienced boy 
who had, in 1760, been managed by his mother and his 
Groom of the Stole. He had, during several years, 
observed the struggles of parties, and conferred daily 20 
on high questions of state with able and experienced 
politicians. His way of life had developed his under- 
standing and character. He .was now no longer a pup- 
pet, but had very decided opinions both of men and 
things. Nothing could be more natural than that he 25 
should have high notions of his own prerogatives, 
should be impatient of opposition, and should wish 
all public men to be detached from each other and 
dependent on himself alone ; nor could anything be 
more natural than that, in the state in which the 



88 MACAULAT, 

political world then was, he should find instruments fit 
for his purposes. 

Thus sprang into existence and into note a reptile 
species of politicians never before and never since 
5 known in our country. These men disclaimed all politi- 
cal ties, except those which bound them to the throne. 
They were willing to coalesce with any party, to aban- 
don any party, to undermine any party, to assault any 
party, at a moment's notice. To them, all administra- 

10 tions and all oppositions were the same. They regarded 
Bute, Grenville, Eockingham, Pitt, without one senti- 
ment either of predilection or of aversion. They were 
the King's friends. It is to be observed that this friend- 
ship implied no personal intimacy. These people had 

15 never lived with their master as Dodington at one time 
lived with his father, or as Sheridan afterwards lived 
with his son. They never hunted with him in the 
morning, or played cards with him in the evening, never 
shared his mutton, or walked with him among his tur- 

20 nips. Only one or two of them ever saw his face, ex- 
cept on public days. The whole band, however, always 
had early and accurate information as to his personal 
inclinations. These people were never high in the ad- 
ministration. They were generally to be found in 

25 places of much emolument, little labor, and no responsi- 
bility ; and these places they continued to occupy 
securely while the cabinet was six or seven times recon- 
structed. Their peculiar business was not to support 
the ministry against the Opposition, but to support the 
King against the ministry. Whenever his Majesty was 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 89 

induced to give a reluctant assent to the introduction of 
some bill which his constitutional advisers regarded as 
necessary, his friends in the House of Commons were 
sure to speak against it, to vote against it, to throw in 
its way every obstruction compatible with the forms of 5 
Parliament. If his Majesty found it necessary to admit 
into his closet a Secretary of State or a First Lord of 
the Treasury whom he disliked, his friends were sure to 
miss no opportunity of thwarting and humbling the 
obnoxious minister. In return for these services, the 10 
Kiug covered them with his protection. It was to no 
purpose that his responsible servants complained to him 
that they were daily betrayed and impeded by men who 
were eating the bread of the government. He some- 
times justified the offenders, sometimes excused them, 15 
sometimes owned that they were to blame, but said that 
he must take time to consider whether he could part 
with them. He never would turn them out ; and, while 
everything else in the state was constantly changing, 
these sycophants seemed to have a life estate in their 20 
offices. 

It was well known to the King's friends that, though 
his Majesty had consented to the repeal of the Stamp 
Act, he had consented with a very bad grace, and that 
though he had eagerly welcomed the Whigs, when, in his 25 
extreme need and at his earnest entreaty, they had 
undertaken to free him from an insupportable yoke, he 
had by no means got over his early prejudices against 
his deliverers. The ministers soon found that, while 
they were encountered in front by the^whole force of a 



90 MACAULAT. 

strong Opposition, their rear was assailed by a large 
body of those whom they had regarded as auxiliaries. 

Nevertheless, Lord Eockingham and his adherents 
went on resolutely with the bill for repealing the Stamp 

5 Act.. They had on their side all the manufacturing and 
commercial interests of the realm. In the debates the 
government was powerfully .supported. Two great ora- 
tors and statesmen, belonging to two different genera- 
tions, repeatedly put forth all their powers in defence 

10 of the bill. The House of Commons heard Pitt for the 
last time, and Burke for the first time, and was in doubt 
to which of them the palm of eloquence should be 
assigned. It was indeed a splendid sunset and a 
splendid dawn. 

15 For a time the event seemed doubtful. In several 
divisions the ministers were hard pressed. On one occa- 
sion, not less than twelve of the King's friends, all men 
in ofiice, voted against the government. It was to no 
purpose that Lord Eockingham remonstrated with the 

20 King. His Majesty confessed that there was ground 
for complaint, but hoped that gentle means would bring 
the mutineers to a better mind. If they persisted in 
their misconduct, he would dismiss them. 

At length the decisive day arrived. The gallery, the 

25 lobby, the Court of Eequests, the staircases, were 
crowded with merchants from all the great ports of the 
island. The debate lasted till long after midnight. On 
the division the ministers had a great majority. The 
dread of civil war, and the outcry of all the trading 
towns of the kii^igdom, had been too strong for the 
combined strength of the court and the Opposition. 



THE EABL OF CHATHAM. 91 

It was in the first dim twilight of a February morning 
that the doors were thrown open, and that the chiefs of 
the hostile parties showed themselves to the multitude. 
Conway was received with loud applause. But, when 
Pitt appeared, all eyes were fixed on him alone. All 5 
hats were in the air. Loud and long huzzas accom- 
panied him to his chair, and a train of admirers escorted 
him all the way to his home. Then came forth Gren- 
ville. As soon as he was recognized, a storm of hisses 
and curses broke forth. He turned fiercely on the 10 
crowd, and caught one man by the throat. The by- 
standers were in great alarm. If a scuffle began, none 
could say how it might end. Fortunately the person 
who had been collared only said, " If I may not hiss, 
sir, I hope I may laugh,'^ and laughed in Grenville's 15 
face. 

The majority had been so decisive, that all the oppo- 
nents of the ministry, save one, were disposed to let the 
bill pass without any further contention. But solicita- 
tion and expostulation were thrown away on Grenville. 20 
His indomitable spirit rose up stronger and stronger 
under the load of public hatred. He fought out the 
battle obstinately to the end. On the last reading he 
had a sharp altercation with his brother-in-law, the last 
of their many sharp altercations. Pitt thundered in his 25 
loftiest tones against the man who had wished to dip the 
ermine of a British King in the blood of the British 
people. Grenville replied with his wonted intrepidity 
and asperity. " If the tax," he said, "were still to be 
laid on, I would lay it on. For the evils which it may 



92 MACAULAY. 

produce, my accuser is answerable. His profusion made 
it necessary. His declarations against the constitutional 
powers of Kings, Lords, and Commons have made it 
doubly necessary. I do not envy him the huzza. I 

5 glory in the hiss. If it were to be done again, I would 
do it.'' 

The repeal of the Stamp Act was the chief measure of 
Lord Kockingham's government. But that government 
is entitled to the praise of having put a stop to two 

10 oppressive practices, which, in Wilkes's case, had. 
attracted the notice and excited the just indignation of 
the public. The House of Commons was induced by the 
ministers to pass a resolution condemning the use of 
general warrants, and. another resolution condemning 

15 the seizure of papers in cases of libel. 

It must be added, to the lasting honor of Lord 
Rockingham, that his administration was the first 
which, during a long course of years, had the courage 
and the virtue to refrain from bribing members of Par- 

20 liament. His enemies accused him and his friends of 
weakness, of haughtiness, of party spirit ; but calumny 
itself never dared to couple his name with corruption. 

Unhappily his government, though one of the best 
that has ever existed in our country, was also one of the 

25 weakest. The King's friends assailed and obstructed 
the ministers at every turn. To appeal to the King was 
only to draw forth new promises and new evasions. 
His Majesty was sure that there must be some misunder- 
standing. Lord Eockingham had better speak to the 
gentlemen. They should be dismissed on the next fault. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 93 

The next fault was soon committed, and His Majesty- 
still continued to shuffle. It was too bad. It was quite 
abominable ; but it mattered less as the prorogation was 
at hand. He would give the delinquents one more 
chance. If they did not alter their conduct next session, 5 
he should not have one word to say for them. He had 
already resolved that, long before the commencement of 
the next session, Lord Kockingham should cease to be 
minister. 

We have now come to a part of our story which, 10 
admiring as we do the genius and the many noble quali- 
ties of Pitt, we cannot relate without much pain. We 
believe that, at this conjuncture, he had it in his power 
to give the victory either to the Whigs or to the King's 
friends. If he had allied himself closely with Lord 15 
Kockingham, what could the court have done ? There 
would have been only one alternative, the Whigs or 
Grenville; and there could be no doubt what the King's 
choice would be. He still remembered, as well he 
might, with the uttermost bitterness, the thraldom from 20 
which his uncle had freed him, and said about this time, 
with great vehemence, that he would sooner see the 
Devil come into his closet than Grenville. 

And what was there to prevent Pitt from allying him- 
self with Lord Eockingham ? On all the most impor- 25 
tant questions their views were the same. They had 
agreed in condemning the peace, the Stamp Act, the 
general warrant, the seizure of papers. . The points on 
which they differed were few and unimportant. In 
integrity, in disinterestedness, in hatred of corruption, 



94 MACAULAY. 

they resembled each other. Their personal interests 
could not clash. They sat in different Houses, and Pitt 
had always declared that nothing should induce him to 
be first lord of the treasury. 
5 If the opportunity of forming a coalition beneficial to 
the state, and honorable to all concerned, was suffered 
to escape, the fault was not with the Whig ministers. 
They behaved towards Pitt with an obsequiousness 
which, had it not been the effect of sincere admiration 

10 and of anxiety for the public interests, might have been 
justly called servile. They repeatedly gave him to 
understand that, if he chose to join their ranks, they 
were ready to receive him, not as an associate, but as a 
leader. They had proved their respect for him by 

15 bestowing a peerage on the person who, at that time, 
enjoyed the largest share of his confidence. Chief Justice 
Pratt. What then was there to divide Pitt from the 
Whigs ? What, on the other hand, were there in common 
between him and the King's friends, that he should lend 

20 himself to their purposes, he who had never owed any- 
thing to flattery or intrigue, he whose eloquence and 
independent spirit had overawed two generations of 
slaves and jobbers, he who had twice been forced by 
the enthusiasm of an admiring nation on a reluctant 

25 Prince ? 

Unhappily the court had gained Pitt, not, it is true, 
by those ignoble means which were employed when such 
men as Rigby and Wedderburn were to be won, but by 
allurements suited to a nature noble even in its aberra- 
tions. The King set himself to seduce the one man 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 95 

who could turn the Whigs out without letting Grenville 
in. Praise, caresses, promises, were lavished on the idol 
of the nation. He, and he alone, could put an end to 
faction, could bid defiance to all the powerful connec- 
tions in the land united, Whigs and Tories, Eocking- 5 
hams, Bedfords, and Grenvilles. These blandishments 
produced a great effect. For though Pitt's spirit was 
high and manly, though his eloquence was often exerted 
with formidable effect against the court, and though his 
theory of government had been learned in the school of 10 
Locke and Sidney, he had always regarded the person 
of the sovereign with profound veneration. As soon as 
he was brought face to face with royalty, his imagina- 
tion and sensibility were too strong for his principles. 
His Whiggism thawed and disappeared ; and he became, 15 
for the time, a Tory of the old Ormond pattern. Nor 
was he by any means unwilling to assist in the work of 
dissolving all political connections. His own weight in 
the state was wholly independent of such connections. 
He was therefore inclined to look on them with dislike, 20 
and made far too little distinction between gangs of knaves 
associated for the mere purpose of robbing the public, 
and confederacies of honorable men for the promotion of 
great public objects. Nor had he the sagacity to per- 
ceive that the strenuous efforts which he made to annihi- 25 
late all parties tended only to establish the ascendency of 
one party, and that the basest and most hateful of all. 

It may be doubted whether he would have been thus 
misled, if his mind had been in full health and vigor. 
But the truth is that he had for some time been in an 



96 MACAULAY. 

unnatural state of excitement. No suspicion of this 
sort had yet got abroad. His eloquence had never shone 
with more splendor than during the recent debates. 
But people afterwards called to mind many things which 
5 ought to have roused their apprehensions. His habits 
were gradually becoming more and more eccentric. A 
horror of all loud sounds, such as is said to have been 
one of the many oddities of Wallenstein, grew upon him. 
Though the most affectionate of fathers, he could not at 

10 this time bear to hear the voices of his own children, 
and laid out great sums at Hayes in buying up houses 
contiguous to his own, merely that he might have no 
neighbors to disturb him with their noise. He then sold 
Hayes, and took possession of a villa at Hampstead, 

15 where he again began to purchase houses to right and 
left. In expense, indeed, he vied, during this part of 
his life, with the wealthiest of the conquerors of Bengal 
and Tanjore. At Burton Pynsent, he ordered a great 
extent of ground to be planted with cedars. Cedars 

20 enough for the purpose were not to be found in Somer- 
setshire. They were therefore collected in London, and 
sent down by land carriage. Belays of laborers were 
hired; and the work went on all night by torchlight. 
No man could be more abstemious than Pitt ; yet the 

25 profusion of his kitchen was a wonder even to epicures. 
Several dinners were always dressing, for his appetite 
was capricious and fanciful ; and at whatever moment he 
felt inclined to eat, he expected a meal to be instantly 
on the table. Other circumstances might be mentioned, 
such as separately are of little moment, but such as, 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 97 

when taken together and when viewed in connection 
with the strange events which followed, justify us in 
believing that his mind was already in a morbid state. 

Soon after the close of the session of Parliament, 
Lord Eockingham received his dismissal. He retired, 5 
accompanied by a firm body of friends, whose consist- 
ency and uprightness enmity itself was forced to admit. 
None of them had asked or obtained any pension or any 
sinecure, either in possession or in reversion. Such dis- 
interestedness was then rare among politicians. Their 10 
chief, though not a man of brilliant talents, had won 
for himself an honorable fame, which he kept pure to 
the last. He had, in spite of difficulties which seemed 
almost insurmountable, removed great abuses and averted 
a civil war. Sixteen years later, in a dark and terrible 15 
day, he was again called upon to save the state, brought 
to the very brink of ruin by the same perfidy and obsti- 
nacy which had embarrassed, and at length overthrown, 
his first administration. 

Pitt was planting in Somersetshire when he was sum- 20 
moned to court by a letter written by the royal hand. 
He instantly hastened to London. The irritability of 
his mind and body were increased by the rapidity with 
which he travelled; and when he reached his journey's 
end he was suffering from fever. Ill as he was, he saw 25 
the King at Richmond, and undertook to form an 
administration. 

Pitt was scarcely in the state in which a man should 
be who has to conduct delicate and arduous negotiations. 
In his letters to his wife, he complained that the con- 



98 MACAULAY. 

ferences in which it was necessary for him to bear a 
part heated his blood and accelerated his pulse. From 
other sources of information we learn that his language, 
even to those whose co-operation he wished to engage, 
5 was strangely peremptory and despotic. Some of his 
notes written at this time have been preserved, and are 
in a style which Lewis the Fourteenth would have been 
too well bred to employ in addressing any French gen- 
tleman. 

10 In the attempt to dissolve all parties, Pitt met with 
some difficulties. Some Whigs, whom the court would 
gladly have detached from Lord Rockingham, rejected 
all offers. The Bedfords were perfectly willing to break 
with Grenville ; but Pitt would not come up to their 

15 terms. Temple, whom Pitt at first meant to place at 
the head of the treasury, proved intractable. A cold- 
ness indeed had, during some months, been fast growing 
between the brothers-in-law, so long and so closely allied 
in politics. Pitt was angry with Temple for opposing 

20 the repeal of the Stamp Act. Temple was angry with 
Pitt for refusing to accede to that family league which 
was now the favorite plan at Stowe. At length the 
Earl proposed an equal partition of power and patronage, 
and offered, on this condition, to give up his brother 

25 George. Pitt thought the demand exorbitant, and posi- 
tively refused compliance. A bitter quarrel followed. 
Each of the kinsmen was true to his character. Temple's 
soul festered with spite, and Pitt's swelled into con- 
tempt. Temple represented Pitt as the most odious of 
hypocrites and traitors.* Pitt held a different and per- 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 99 

haps a more provoking tone. Temple was a good sort 
of man enough, whose single title to distinction was, 
that he had a large garden, with a large piece of water, 
and a great many pavilions and summer-houses. To 
his fortunate connection with a great orator and states- 5 
man he was indebted for an importance in the state 
which his own talents could never have gained for him. 
That importance had turned his head. He had begun 
to fancy that he could form administrations, and govern 
empires. It was piteous to see a well-meaning man lo 
under such a delusion. 

In spite of all these difficulties, a ministry was made 
such as the King wished to see, a ministry in which all 
his Majesty's friends were comfortably accommodated, 
and which, with the exception of his Majesty's friends, 15 
contained no four persons who had ever in their lives 
been in the habit of acting together. Men who had 
never concurred in a single vote found themselves seated 
at the same board. The office of paymaster was divided 
between two persons who had never exchanged a word. 2ft 
Most of the chief posts were filled either by personal 
adherents of Pitt, or by members of the late ministry, 
who had been induced to remain in place after the dis- 
missal of Lord Eockingham. To the former class be- 
longed Pratt, now Lord Camden, who accepted the great 25 
seal, and Lord Shelburne, who was made one of the 
Secretaries of State. To the latter class belonged the 
Duke of Grafton, who became First Lord of the Treas- 
ury, and Conway, who kept his old position both in the 
government and in the House of Commons. Charles 



100 MACAULAY. 

Townsliend, who had. belonged to every party, and cared 
for none, was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pitt him- 
self was declared prime minister, but refused to take 
any laborious office. He was created Earl of Chatham, 
5 and the privy seal was delivered to him. 

It is scarcely necessary to say, that the failure, the 
complete and disgraceful failure, of this arrangement, 
is not to be ascribed to any want of capacity in the per- 
sons whom we have named. None of them was deficient 

10 in abilities ; and four of them, Pitt himself, Shelburne, 
Camden, and Townshend, were men of high intellectual 
eminence. The fault was not in the materials, but in 
the principle on which the materials were put together. 
Pitt had mixed up these conflicting elements, in the full 

15 confidence that he should be able to keep them all in 
perfect subordination to himself, and in perfect harmony 
with each other. We shall soon see how the experiment 
succeeded. 

On the very day on which the new prime minister 

20 kissed hands, three-fourths of that popularity which he 
had long enjoyed without a rival, and to which he owed 
the greater part of his authority, departed from him. 
A violent outcry was raised, not against that part of his 
conduct which really deserved severe condemnation, but 

25 against a step in which we can see nothing to censure. 
His acceptance of a peerage produced a general burst of 
indignation. Yet surely no peerage had ever been bet- 
ter earned ; nor was there ever a statesman who more 
needed the repose of the Upper House. Pitt was noAV 
growing old. He was much older in constitution than 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 101 

in years. It was witli imminent risk to his life that he 
had, on some important occasions, attended his duty in 
Parliament. During the session of 1764, he had not 
been able to take part in a single debate. It was impos- 
sible that he should go through the nightly labor of 5 
conducting the business of the government in the House 
of Commons. His wish to be transferred, under such 
circumstances, to a less busy and a less turbulent as- 
sembly, was natural and reasonable. The nation, how- 
ever, overlooked all these considerations. Those who 10 
had most loved and honored the great Commoner were 
loudest in invective against the new-made Lord. London 
had hitherto been true to him through every vicissitude. 
When the citizens learned that he had been sent for 
from Somersetshire, that he had been closeted with the 15 
King at Richmond, and that he was to be first minister, 
they had been in transports of joy. Preparations were 
made for a grand entertainment and for a general illu- 
mination. The lamps had actually been placed round 
the Monument, when the Gazette announced that the 20 
object of all this enthusiasm was an Earl. Instantly 
the feast was countermanded. The lamps were taken 
down. The newspapers raised the roar of obloquy. 
Pamphlets, made up of calumny and scurrility, filled 
the shops of all the booksellers ; and of those pamphlets 25 
the most galling were written under the direction of the 
malignant Temple. It was now the fashion to compare 
the two Williams, William Pulteney and William Pitt. 
Both, it was said, had, by eloquence and simulated 
patriotism, acquired a great ascendency in the House of 



102 MACAULAT. 

Commons and in the country. Both had been intrusted 
with the office of reforming the government. Both had, 
when at the height of power and popularity, been se- 
duced by the splendor of the coronet. Both had been 

5 made earls, and both had at once become objects of aver- 
sion and scorn to the nation which a few hours before 
had regarded them with affection and veneration. 

The clamor against Pitt appears to have had a serious 
effect on the foreign relations of the country. His name 

10 had till now acted like a spell at Versailles and Saint 
Ildefonso. English travellers on the Continent had re- 
marked that nothing more was necessary to silence a 
whole roomful of boasting Frenchmen tlian to drop a hint 
of the probability that Mr. Pitt would return to power. 

15 In an instant there was deep silence : all shoulders 
rose, and all faces were lengthened. Now, unhappily, 
every foreign court, in learning that he was recalled to 
office, learned also that he no longer possessed the hearts 
of his countrymen. Ceasing to be loved at home, he 

20 ceased to be feared abroad. The name of Pitt had been 
a charmed name. Our envoys tried in vain to conjure 
with the name of Chatham. 

The difficulties which beset Chatham were daily in- 
creased by the despotic manner in which he treated all 

25 around him. Lord Eockingham had, at the time of the' 
change of ministry, acted with great moderation, had 
expressed a hope that the new government would act on 
the principles of the late government, and had even 
interfered to prevent many of his friends from quitting 
office. Thus Saunders and Keppel, two naval command- 



THE EAEL OF CHATHAM. 103 

ers of great eminence, had been induced to remain at v 
the Admiralty, where their services were much needed. 
The Duke of Portland was still Lord Chamberlain, and 
Lord Besborough Postmaster. But within a quarter of 
a year, Lord Chatham had so deeply affronted these 5 
men, that they all retired in disgust. In truth, his tone, 
submissive in the closet, was at this time insupportably 
tyrannical in the cabinet. His colleagues were merely 
his clerks for naval, financial, and diplomatic business. 
Conway, meek as he was, was on one occasion provoked 10 
into declaring that such language as Lord Chatham's 
had never been heard west of Constantinople, and was 
with difficulty prevented by Horace Walpole from re- 
signing, and rejoining the standard of Lord Rockingham. 

The breach which had been made in the government 15 
by the defection of so many of the Bockinghams, Chat- 
ham hoped to supply by the help of the Bedfords. 
But with the Bedfords he could not deal as he had dealt 
with other parties. It was to no purpose that he bade 
high for one or two members of the faction, in the hope 20 
of detaching them from the rest. They were to be had ; 
but they were to be had only in the lot. There was in- 
deed for a moment some wavering and some disputing 
among them. But at length the counsels of the shrewd 
and resolute Bigby prevailed. They determined to 25 
stand firmly together, and plainly intimated to Chatham 
that he must take them all, or that he should get none 
of them. The event proved that they were wiser in their 
generation than any other connection in the state. In a 
few months they were able to dictate their own terms. 



104 MACAULAY. 

The most important public measure of Lord Chatham's 
administration was his celebrated interference with the 
corn trade. The harvest had been bad; the price of 
food was high ; and he thought it necessary to take on 
5 himself the responsibility of laying an embargo on the 
exportation of grain. When Parliament met, this pro- 
ceeding was attacked by the Opposition as unconstitu- 
tional, and defended by the ministers as indispensably 
necessary. At last an act was passed to indemnify all 

10 who had been concerned in the embargo. 

The first words uttered by Chatham in the House of 
Lords, were in defence of his conduct on this occasion. 
He spoke with a calmness, sobriety, and dignity, well 
suited to the audience which he was addressing. A 

15 subsequent speech which he made on the same subject 
was less successful. He bade defiance to aristocratical 
connections, with a superciliousness to which the Peers 
were not accustomed, and with tones and gestures better 
suited to a large and stormy assembly than to the body 

20 of which he was now a member. A short altercation 

followed, and he was told very plainly that he should 

not be suffered to browbeat the old nobility of England. 

It gradually became clearer and clearer that he was in 

a distempered state of mind. His attention had been 

25 drawn to the territorial acquisitions of the East India 
Company, and he determined to bring the whole of that 
great subject before Parliament. He would not, how- 
ever, confer on the subject with any of his colleagues. 
It was in vain that Conway, who was charged with the 
conduct of business in the House of Commons, and 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 105 

Charles Townsliend, who was responsible for the direc- 
tion of the finances, begged for some glimpse of light as 
to what was in contemplation. Chatham's answers 
were sullen and mysterious. He must decline any dis- 
cussion with them ; he did not want their assistance ; he 5 
had fixed on a person to take charge of his measure in 
the House of Commons. This person was a member 
who was not connected with the government, and who 
neither had, nor deserved to have, the ear of the House, 
a noisy, purse-proud, illiterate demagogue, whose Cockney lo 
English and scraps of mispronounced Latin were the 
jest of the newspapers. Alderman Beckford. It may 
well be supposed that these strange proceedings pro- 
duced a ferment through the whole political world. 
The city was in commotion. The East India Com- 15 
pany invoked the faith of charters. Burke thundered 
against the ministers. The ministers looked at each 
other, and knew not what to say. In the midst of 
the confusion, Lord Chatham proclaimed himself gouty, 
and retired to Bath. It was announced, after some time, 20 
that he was better, that he would shortly return, that he 
would soon put everything in order. A day was fixed 
for his arrival in London. But when he reached the 
Castle inn at Marlborough, he stopped, shut himself up 
in his room, and remained there some weeks. Every- 25 
body who travelled that road was amazed by the number 
of his attendants. Footmen and grooms, dressed in his 
family livery, filled the whole inn, though one of the 
largest in England, and swarmed in the streets of the 
little town. The truth was, that the invalid had insisted 



106 MACAULAY. 

that, during his stay, all the waiters and stable-boys of 
the Castle should wear his livery. 

His colleagues were in despair. The Duke of Graf- 
ton proposed to go down to Marlborough in order to 
5 consult the oracle. But he was informed that Lord 
Chatham must decline all conversation on business. In 
the mean time, all the parties which were out of office, 
Bedfords, Grenvilles, and Eockinghams, joined to oppose 
the distracted government on the vote for the land tax. 

10 They were re-enforced by almost all the county members, 
and had a considerable majority. This was the first 
time that a ministry had been beaten on an important 
division in the House of Commons since the fall of Sir 
Robert Walpole. The administration thus furiously 

15 assailed from without was torn by internal dissensions. 
It had been formed on no principle whatever. From 
the very first, nothing but Chatham's authority had pre- 
vented the hostile contingents which made up his ranks 
from going to blows with each other. That authority 

20 was now withdrawn, and everything was in commotion. 
Conway, a brave soldier, but in civil affairs the most 
timid and irresolute of men, afraid of disobliging the 
King, afraid of being abused in the newspapers, afraid 
of being thought factious if he went out, afraid of 

25 being thought interested if he stayed in, afraid of 
everything, and afraid of being known to be afraid 
of anything, was beaten backwards and forwards like a 
shuttlecock between Horace Walpole who wished to 
make him prime minister, and Lord John Cavendish 
who wished to draw him into opposition. Charles 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 107 

Townshend, a man of splendid eloquence, of lax princi- 
ples, and of boundless vanity and presumption, would 
submit to no control. The full extent of his parts, of 
his ambition, and of his arrogance, had not yet been 
made manifest ; for he had always quailed before the 5 
genius and the lofty character of Pitt. B\it now that 
Pitt had quitted the House of Commons, and seemed to 
have abdicated the part of chief minister, Townshend 
broke loose from all restraint. 

While things were in this state, Chatham at length 10 
returned to London. He might as well have remained 
at Marlborough. He would see nobody. He would give 
no opinion on any public matter. The Duke of Grafton 
begged piteously for an interview, for an hour, for half 
an hour, for five minutes. The answer was that it was 15 
impossible. The King himself repeatedly condescended 
to expostulate and implore. " Your duty," he wrote, 
^' your own honor, require you to make an effort." The 
answers to these appeals were commonly written in Lady 
Chatham's hand, from her lord's dictation ; for he had 20 
not energy even to use a pen. He flings himself at the 
King's feet. He is penetrated by the royal goodness, so 
signally shown to the most unhappy of men. He implores 
a little more indulgence. He cannot as yet transact 
business. He cannot see his colleagues. Least of all 25 
can he bear the excitement of an interview with majesty. 

Some were half inclined to suspect that he was, to use 
a military phrase, malingering. He had made, they said, 
a great blunder, and had found it out. His immense 
popularity, his high reputation for statesmanship, were 



108 MACAULAY. 

gone forever. Intoxicated by pride, he had undertaken 
a task beyond his abilities. He now saw nothing before 
him but distresses and humiliations ; and he had therefore 
simulated illness, in order to escape from vexations 

5 which he had not fortitude to meet. This suspicion, 
though it del'ived some color from that weakness which 
was the most striking blemish of his character, was cer- 
tainly unfounded. His mind, before he became first min- 
ister, had been, as we have said, in an unsound state ; and 

10 physical and moral causes now concurred to make the 
derangement of his faculties complete. The gout, which 
had been the torment of his whole life, had been sup- 
pressed by strong remedies. For the first time since he 
was a boy at Oxford, he had passed several months with- 

15 out a twinge. But his hand and foot had been relieved 
at the expense of his nerves. He became melancholy, 
fanciful, irritable. The embarrassing state of public 
affairs, the grave responsibility which lay on him, the 
consciousness of his errors, the disputes of his col- 

20 leagues, the savage clamors raised by his detractors, 
bewildered his enfeebled mind. One thing alone, he said, 
could save him. He must repurchase Hayes. The 
unwilling consent of the new occupant was extorted by 
Lady Chatham's entreaties and tears ; and her lord was 

25 somewhat easier. But if business were mentioned to 
him, he, once the proudest and boldest of mankind, 
behaved like a hysterical girl, trembled from head to foot, 
and burst into a flood of tears. 

His colleagues for a time continued to entertain the 
expectation that his health would soon be restored, and 



THE BATtL OF CHATHAM. 109 

that he would emerge from his retirement. But month 
followed month, and still he remained hidden in myste- 
rious seclusion, and sunk, as far as they could learn, in 
the deepest dejection of spirits. They at length ceased 
to hope or to fear anything from him ; and though he was 5 
still nominally Prime Minister, took without scruple 
steps which they knew to be diametrically opposed to all 
liis opinions and feelings, allied themselves with those 
whom he had proscribed, disgraced those whom he most 
esteemed, and laid taxes on the colonies, in the face of lo 
the strong declarations which he had recently made. 

When he had passed about a year and three-quarters 
in gloomy privacy, the King received a few lines in 
Lady Chatham's hand. They contained a request, dic- 
tated by her lord, that he might be permitted to resign 15 
the Privy Seal. After some civil show of reluctance, 
the resignation was accepted. Indeed Chatham was, by 
this time, almost as much forgotten as if he had already 
been lying in Westminster Abbey. 

At length, the clouds which had gathered over his 20 
mind broke and passed away. His gout returned, and 
freed him from a more cruel malady. His nerves were 
newly braced. His spirits became buoyant. He woke 
as from a sickly dream. It was a strange recovery. 
Men had been in the habit of talking of him as of one 25 
dead, and, when he first showed himself at the King's 
levee, started as if they had seen a ghost. It was more 
than two years and a half since he had appeared in public. 

He, too, had cause for wonder. The world which he 
now entered was not the world which he had quitted. 



110 MACAULAY. 

The administration which he had formed had never been, 
at any one moment, entirely changed. But there had 
been so many losses and so many accessions, that he 
could scarcely recognize his own work. Charles Towns- 

5 hend was dead. Lord Shelburne had been dismissed. 
Conway had sunk into utter insignificance. The Duke 
of Grafton had fallen into the hands of the Bedfords. 
The Bedfords had deserted Grenville, had made their 
peace with the King and the King's friends, and had 

10 been admitted to office. Lord North was Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, and was rising fast in importance. Cor- 
sica had been given up to France without a struggle. 
The disputes with the American colonies had been re- 
vived. A general election had taken place. Wilkes had 

15 returned from exile, and, outlaw as he was, had been 
chosen knight of the shire for Middlesex. The multi- 
tude was on his side. The Court was obstinately bent 
on ruining him, and was prepared to shake the very 
foundations of the constitution for the sake of a paltry 

20 revenge. The House of Commons, assuming to itself an 
authority which of right belongs only to the whole legis- 
lature, had declared Wilkes incapable of sitting in Par- 
liament. Nor had it been thought sufficient to' keep him 
out. Another must be brought in. Since the free-hold- 

25 ers of Middlesex had obstinately refused to choose a 
member acceptable to the Court, the House had chosen a 
member for them. This was not the only instance, per- 
haps not the most disgraceful instance, of the inveterate 
malignity of the Court. Exasperated by the steady 
opposition of the Eockingham party, the King's friends 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. HI 

had tried to rob a distinguished Whig nobleman of his 
private estate, and had persisted in their mean wicked- 
ness till their own servile majority had revolted from 
mere disgust and shame.. Discontent had spread through- 
out the nation, and was kept up by stimulants such as 5 
had rarely been applied to the public mind. Junius had 
taken the field, had trampled Sir William Draper in the 
dust, had well-nigh broken the heart of Blackstone, and 
had so mangled the reputation of the Duke of Grafton, 
that his grace had become sick of office, and was begin- lo 
ning to look wistfully towards the shades of Euston. 
Every principle of foreign, domestic, and colonial policy 
which was dear to the heart of Chatham had, during 
the eclipse of his genius, been violated by the govern- 
ment which he had formed. 15 

The remaining years of his life were spent in vainly 
struggling against that fatal policy which, at the moment 
when he might have given it a death blow, he had been 
induced to take undey his protection. His exertions 
redeemed his own fame, but they effected little for his 20 
country. 

He found two parties arrayed against the government, 
the party \Df his own brothers-in-law, the Grenvilles, and 
the party of Lord Eockingham. On the question of the 
Middlesex election these parties were agreed. But on 25 
many other important questions they differed widely ; 
and they were, in truth, not less hostile to each other 
than to the Court. The Grenvilles had, during several 
years, annoyed the Eockinghams with a succession of 
acrimonious pamphlets. It was long before the Eock- 



112 MACAULAY. 

inghams could be induced to retaliate. But an ill- 
natured tract, written under Grenville's direction, and 
entitled "A State of the Nation,'^ was too much for their 
patience. Burke undertook to defend and avenge his 

5 friends, and executed the task with admirable skill and 
vigor. On every point he was victorious, and nowhere 
more completely victorious than when he joined issue 
on those dry and minute questions of statistical and 
financial detail in which the main strength of Grenville 

10 lay. The official drudge, even on his own chosen ground, 
was utterly unable to maintain the fight against the 
great orator and philosopher. When Chatham reap- 
peared, Grenville was still writhing with the recent 
shame and smart of this well-merited chastisement. 

15 Cordial co-operation between the two sections of the 
Opposition was impossible. Nor could Chatham easily 
connect himself with either. His feelings, in spite of 
many affronts given and received, drew him towards the 
Grenvilles. For he had strong domestic affections ; and 

20 his nature, which, though haughty, was by no means 
obdurate, had been softened by affliction. But from his 
kinsmen he was separated by a wide difference of opin- 
ion on the question of colonial taxation. A reconcilia- 
tion, however, took place. He visited Stowe : he shook 

25 hands with George Grenville ; and the Whig freeholders 
of Buckinghamshire, at their public dinners, drank many 
bumpers to the union of the three brothers. 

In opinions, Chatham was much nearer to the Eock- 
inghams than to his own relatives. But between him 
and the Eockinghams there was a gulf not easily to be 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 113 

passed. He had deeply injured them, and in injuring 
them, had deeply injured his country. When the bal- 
ance was trembling between them and the Court, he 
had thrown the whole weight of his genius, of his 
renown, of his popularity, into the scale of misgovern- 5 
ment. It must be added, that many eminent members 
of the party still retained a bitter recollection of the 
asperity and disdain with which they had been treated 
by him at the time when he assumed the direction of 
affairs. It is clear from Burke's pamphlets and speeches, 10 
and still more clear from his private letters, and from 
the language which he held in conversation, that he 
regarded Chatham with a feeling not far removed from 
dislike. Chatham was undoubtedly conscious of his 
error, and desirous to atone for it. But his overtures of 15 
friendship, though made with earnestness, and even with 
unwonted humility, were at first received by Lord Kock- 
ingham with cold and austere reserve. Gradually the 
intercourse of the two statesmen became courteous and 
even amicable. But the past was never wholly for- 20 
gotten. 

Chatham did not, however, stand alone. Bound him 
gathered a party, small in number, but strong in great 
and various talents. Lord Camden, Lord Shelburne, 
Colonel Barre, and Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, 25 
were the principal members of this connection. 

There is no reason to believe that, from this time till 
within a few weeks of Chatham's death, his intellect 
suffered any decay. His eloquence was almost to the 
last heard with delight. But it was not exactly the 



114 MACAULAY. 

eloquence of tlie House of Lords. That lofty and pas- 
sionate, but somewhat desultory declamation, in which 
he excelled all men, and which was set off by looks, 
tones, and gestures, worthy of Garrick or Talma, was 
5 out of place in a small apartment where the audience 
often consisted of three or four drowsy prelates, three 
or four old judges, accustomed during many years to 
disregard rhetoric, and to look only at facts and argu- 
ments, and three or four listless and supercilious men of 

10 fashion, whom anything like enthusiasm moved to a 
sneer. In the House of Commons, a flash of his eye, a 
wave of his arm, had sometimes cowed Murray. But, 
in the House of Peers, his utmost vehemence and pathos 
produced less effect than the moderation, the reasonable- 

15 ness, the luminous order, and the serene dignity, which 
characterized the speeches of Lord Mansfield. 

On the question of the Middlesex election, all the 
three divisions of the Opposition acted in concert. No 
orator in either House defended what is now universally 

20 admitted to have been the constitutional cause with 
more ardor or eloquence than Chatham. Before this 
subject had ceased to occupy the public mind, George 
Grenville died. His party rapidly melted away ; and in 
a short time most of his adherents appeared on the 

25 ministerial benches. 

Had George Grenville lived many months longer, the 
friendly ties which, after years of estrangement and 
hostility, had been renewed between him and his brother- 
in-law, would, in all probability, have been a second 
time violently dissolved. Tor now the quarrel between 



THE EABL OF CHATHAM. 115 

England and the North American colonies took a gloomy 
and terrible aspect. Oppression provoked resistance ; 
resistance was made the pretext for fresh oppression. 
The warnings of all the greatest statesmen of the age 
were lost on an imperious court and a deluded nation. 5 
Soon a colonial senate confronted the British Parliament. 
Then the colonial militia crossed bayonets with the Brit- 
ish regiments. At length the commonwealth was torn 
asunder. Two millions of Englishmen, who, fifteen 
years before, had been as loyal to their prince and as 10 
proud of their country as the people of Kent or York- 
shire, separated themselves by a solemn act from the 
Empire. For a time it seemed that the insurgents 
would struggle to small purpose against the vast finan- 
cial and military means of the mother country. But 15 
disasters, following one another in rapid succession, 
rapidly dispelled the illusions of national vanity. At 
length a great British force, exhausted, famished, har- 
assed on every side by a hostile peasantry, was com- 
pelled to deliver up its arms. Those governments which 20 
England had, in the late war, so signally humbled, and 
which had during many years been sullenly brooding 
over the recollections of Quebec, of Minden, and of the 
Moro, now saw with exultation that the day of revenge 
was at hand. France recognized the independence of 25 
the United States; and there could be little doubt that 
the example would soon be followed by Spain. 

Chatham and Rockingham had cordially concurred in 
opposing every part of the fatal policy which had 
brought the state into this dangerous situation. But 



116 M4CAULAY. 

their paths now diverged. Lord Eockingham thought, 
and, as the event proved, thought most justly, that the 
revolted colonies were separated from the Empire for- 
ever, and that the only effect of prolonging the war on 
5 the American continent would be .to divide resources 
which it was desirable to concentrate. If the hopeless 
attempt to subjugate Pennsylvania and Virginia were 
abandoned, war against the House of Bourbon might 
possibly be avoided, or, if inevitable, might be carried 

10 on with success and glory. We might even indemnify 
ourselves for part of what we had lost, at the expense 
of those foreign enemies who had hoped to profit by our 
domestic dissensions. Lord Eockingham, therefore, and 
those who acted with him, conceived that the wisest 

15 course now open to England was to acknowledge the 
independence of the United States, and to turn her 
whole force against her European enemies. 

Chatham, it should seem, ought to have taken the 
same side. Before Erance had taken any part in our 

20 quarrel with the colonies, he had repeatedly, and with 
great energy of language, declared that it was impos- 
sible to conquer America, and he could not without 
absurdity maintain that it was easier to conquer 
Erance and America together than America alone. But 

25 his passions overpowered his judgment, and made him 
blind to his own inconsistency. The very circumstances 
which made the separation of the colonies inevitable 
made it to him altogether insupportable. The dismem- 
berment of the Empire seemed to him less ruinous and 
humiliating, when produced by domestic dissensions, 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 117 

than when produced by foreign interference. His blood 
boiled at the degradation of his country. Whatever 
lowered her among the nations of the earth, he felt as a 
personal outrage to himself. And the feeling was natu- 
ral. He had made her so great. He had been so proud 5 
of her, and she had been so proud of him. He remem- 
bered how, more than twenty years before, in a day of 
gloom and dismay, when her possessions were torn from 
her, when her flag was dishonored, she had called on 
him to save her. He remembered the sudden and 10 
glorious change which his energy had wrought, the long 
series of triumphs, the days of thanksgiving, the nights 
of illumination. Fired by such recollections, he deter- 
mined to separate himself from those who advised that 
the independence of the colonies should be acknowl- 15 
edged. That he was in error will scarcely, we think, be 
disputed by his warmest admirers. Indeed, the treaty, 
by which, a few years later, the republic of the United 
States was recognized, was the work of his most attached 
adherents and of his favorite son. 20 

The Duke of Richmond had given notice of an 
address to the throne, against the further prosecution of 
hostilities with America. Chatham had, during some 
time, absented himself from Parliament, in consequence 
of his growing infirmities. He determined to appear in 25 
his place on this occasion, and to declare that his opin- 
ions were decidedly at variance with those of the Rock- 
ingham party. He was in a state of great excitement. 
His medical attendants were uneasy, and strongly ad- 
vised him to calm himself, and to remain at home. But 



118 MACAULAT. # 

he was not to be controlled. His son William, and his 
son-in-law Lord Mahon, accompanied him to Westmin- 
ster. He rested himself in the Chancellor's room till 
the debate commenced, and then, leaning on his two 
5 young relations, limped to his seat. The slightest par- 
ticulars of that day were remembered, and have been 
carefully recorded. He bowed, it was remarked, with 
great courtliness to those peers who rose to make way 
for him and his supporters. His crutch was in his 

10 hand. He wore, as was his fashion, a rich velvet coat. 
His legs were swathed in flannel. His wig was so large, 
and his face so emaciated, that none of his features 
could be discerned, except the high curve of his nose, 
and his eyes, which still retained a gleam of the old 

15 fire. 

When the Duke of Eichmond had spoken, Chatham 
rose. For some time his voice was inaudible. At length 
his tones became distinct and his action animated. 
Here and there his hearers caught a thought or an ex- 

20 pression which reminded them of William Pitt. But 
it was clear that he was not himself. He lost the thread 
of his discourse, hesitated, repeated the same words 
several times, and was so confused that, in speaking of 
the Act of Settlement, he could not recall the name of 

25 the Electress Sophia. The House listened in solemn 
silence, and with the aspect of profound respect and com- 
passion. The stillness was so deep that the dropping of 
a handkerchief would have been heard. The Duke of 
Eichmond replied with great tenderness and courtesy ; 
but while he spoke, the old man was observed to be 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 119 

restless and irritable. The Duke sat down. Chatham 
stood up again, pressed his hand on his breast, and sank 
down in an apoplectic fit. Three or four lords who sat 
near him caught him in his fall. The House broke up 
in confusion. The dying man was carried to the resi- 5 
dence of one of the officers of Parliament, and was so 
far restored as to be able to bear a journey to Hayes. 
At Hayes, after lingering a few weeks, he expired in 
his seventieth year. His bed was watched to the last, 
with anxious tenderness, by his wife and ^Aildren ; and lo 
he well deserved their care. Too often haughty and 
wayward to others, to them he had been almost effemi- 
nately kind. He had through life been dreaded by his 
political opponents, and regarded with more awe than 
love even by his political associates. But no fear seems 15 
to have mingled with the affection which his fondness, 
constantly overflowing in a thousand endearing forms, 
had inspired in the little circle at Hayes. 

Chatham, at the time of his decease, had not, in both 
Houses of Parliament, ten personal adherents. Half 20 
the public men of the age had been estranged from him 
by his errors, and the other half by the exertions which 
he had made to repair his errors. His last speech had 
been an attack at once on the policy pursued by the 
government, and on the policy recommended by the 25 
Opposition. But death restored him to his old place in 
the affection of his country. Who could hear unmoved 
of the fall of that which had been so great, and which 
had stood so long ? The circumstances, too, seemed 
rather to belong to the tragic stage than to real life. A 



120 MACAULAT. 

great statesman, full of years and honors, led forth to 
the Senate House by a son of rare hopes, and stricken 
down in full council while straining his feeble voice to 
rouse the drooping spirit of his country, could not but 

5 be remembered with peculiar veneration and tenderness. 
The few detractors who ventured to murmur were 
silenced by the indignant clamors of a nation which re- 
membered only the lofty genius, the unsullied probity, 
the undisputed services, of him who was no more. For 

10 once, the chiefs of all parties were agreed. A public 
funeral, a public monument, were eagerly voted. The 
debts of the deceased were paid. A provision was made 
for his family. The city of London requested that the 
remains of the great man whom she had so long loved 

15 and honored might rest under the dome of her^ magnifi- 
cent cathedral. "But the petition came too late. Every- 
thing was already prepared for the interment in West- 
minster Abbey. 

Though men of all parties had concurred in decreeing 

20 posthumous honors to Chatham, his corpse was attended 
to the grave almost exclusively by opponents of the* 
government. The banner of the lordship of Chatham 
was borne by Colonel Barre, attended by the Duke of 
Eichmond and Lord Kockingham. Burke, Savile, and 

25 Dunning upheld the pall. Lord Camden was conspicu- 
ous in the procession. The chief mourner was young 
William Pitt. After the lapse of more than twenty- 
seven years, in a season as dark and perilous, his own 
shattered frame and broken heart were laid, with the 
same pomp, in the same consecrated mould. 



TBE EARL OF CHATHAM. 121 

Chatham sleeps near the northern door of the Church, 
in a spot which has ever since been appropriated to 
statesmen, as the other end of the same transept has 
long been to poets. Mansfield rests there, and the 
second William Pitt, and Fox, and Grattan, and Canning, 5 
and Wilberforce. In no other cemetery do so many- 
great citizens lie within so narrow a space. High over 
those venerable graves towers the stately monument of 
Chatham, and from above, his e^gy, graven by a cun- 
ning hand, seems still, with eagle face and outstretched 10 
arm, to bid England be of good cheer, and to hurl defi- 
ance at her foes. The generation which reared that 
memorial of him has disappeared. The time has cojne 
when the rash and indiscriminate judgments which his 
contemporaries passed on his character may be calmly 15 
revised by history. And history, while, for the warning 
of vehement, high, and daring na^iures, she notes his 
many errors, will yet deliberately pronounce, that, among 
the eminent men whose bones lie near his, scarcely one 
has left a more stainless, and none a more splendid, 20 
name. 



25 



NOTES. 



Page 1, Line 2. Political life, etc. See Macaulay's first " Essay 
on the Earl of Chatham." Pitt entered Parliament in 1735. 

P. 1, 1. 3. George the Second, died Oct. 25, 1760. 

P. 1, 1. 13. George the Third, 1760-1820. He was the grandson 
of George. II. 

P. 2, 1. 1. Idol of England. Macaulay says, *' Whigs and Tories 
vied with each other in extolling the genius and energy of Pitt." 

P. 2, 1. 3. Tidings of battles won, etc. Especially Wolfe's great 
victory at Quebec and Olive's achievements in India. 

P. 2, 1. 6. Great religious schism. To what does this refer ? 

P. 2, 1. 12. English parties. Whigs and Tories. The name is 
practically meaningless. In 1679 the nicknames " Whig " and " Tory " 
were given to the two parties into which the nation was divided on 
the Exclusion Bill (a bill to bar the succession of the Duke of York, 
afterwards James II., brother of Charles II.). 

The Whigs were the party most inclined to progress, most zealous for 
Protestantism and the legal rights of Parliament, and the earnest pro- 
moters of the Exclusion Bill. The Tories were distrustful of popu- 
lar power, upholders of the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings and 
Bishops, and the successful opponents of the Exclusion Bill. 

P. 2, 1. 23. House of Hanover. The House of Hanover has occu- 
pied the English throne since George Lewis of Brunswick, Elector of 
Hanover, in accordance with the Act of Settlement, became George 
I. in 1714. See note, page 18, line 12. 

P. 2, 1. 27. Protestant dynasty ; i.e.. House of Hanover. By the 
Bill of Rights, Roman Catholics cannot receive the crown of Eng- 
land. 

P. 2, 1. 29. Revolution. The Revolution of 1688, the foundation 
of which was the Bill of Rights. By virtue of this bill and of the Act 
of Settlement, " an English monarch is now as much the creature of 
an Act of Parliament as the pettiest tax-gatherer in his realm." 

123 



124 MACAULAT. 

Page 3, Line 8. Dante, 1265-1321. The great Italian poet. His 
Divine Comedy has been called the " Epic of Medisevalism.'" 

P. 3, 1. 8. In Malebolge (evil budgets). The eighth circle of 
Dante's " Inferno." 

" There is a place within the depths of hell, 
Called Malebolge. 

Dante, «' Inferno," Canto XVIII. 1300. 

P. 3, 1. 20. Reign of George the First. From 1714 to 1727. See 
note, page 2, line 23. 

P. 3, 1. 29. The Whig.' The Whigs governed the country from 
1714 to 1761. 

P. 4, 1. 2. Comptroller's staff, Great Wardrobe. Offices of 
the court of the sovereign. 

P. 4, 1. 3. Locke. John Locke, 1632-1704. A celebrated Eng- 
lish philosopher and scholar. Drafted "The grand model" for the 
Carolinas. 

P. 4, 1. 4. Milton. John Milton, 1608-1674. Most celebrated 
English poet since Shakespeare. Secretary to the Council of State 
under Cromwell. See Macaulay's *' Essay on Milton." Locke and 
Milton were among the most earnest and able defenders of the 
Commonwealth. 

P. 4, 1. 4. Pym and Hampden. John Pym, " King Pym," 1584- 
1643. John Hampden, 1594-1643. The most eminent leaders of the 
Parliamentary party in the contest with Charles I. Hampden's 
name is gloriously connected with the refusal to pay ship-money. 
See Green's " Short History," and Macaulay's " Essay on 
Hampden." 

P. 4, 1. 5. Thirtieth of January. Charles I. was beheaded in 
front of "Whitehall Palace on Jan. 30, 1649. The executioner, accord- 
ing to custom, wore a mask that his features might not be seen. It is 
not known who acted as executioner at the death of Charles I. For 
some years it was the custom of the Whigs to drink to the memory 
of the "man in the mask," on the anniversary of this day. 

P. 4, 1. 9 Walpole. Sir Robert Walpole, 1676-1745. An eminent 
Whig statesman. The famous Prime Minister of George I. and 
George II. See Macaulay's first " Essay on the Earl of Chatham," 
also his essays on " Horace Walpole's Letters," and on Lord Mahon's 
•' War of the Succession in Spain." 



NOTES. 125 

Page 4, Line 10. Strafford and Laud. Thomas Wentworth, 
Earl of Strafford, 1593-1641. 

William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury 1573-1645. Ministers of 
Charles I., who were employed by him to establish an absolute 
system of rule and to enforce conformity. Both were executed for 
treason. 

P. 4, 1. 19. Guizot, 1787-1874. Celebrated French statesman and 
historian. Most noted work, " History of Civilization." 

P. 4, 1. 19. Villemain, 1790-1870. A French critic and Minister 
of State. One of the most accomplished writers of his time. 

P. 4, 1. 21. Genoude, 1792-1849. French journalist. Editor of 
royalist journal, but afterwards acted with the revolutionary party. 

P. 4, 1. 21. La Roche Jaquelin, 1805-1867. Leader of the demo- 
cratic legitimists during reign of Louis Philippe. Made a senator by 
Napoleon III. 

What is the point of Macaulay's reference to these men ? 

P. 4, 1. 23, 24. Cavaliers aud Roundheads. Origin of the names 
uncertain. Probably referred to the outward appearance. The names 
were first used about 1641 at the time of the discussion of the Bishops' 
Exclusion Bill (a bill to expel the Bishops from Parliament). " Cav- 
alier" being applied to the Royalists, and "Roundheads" to those 
who flocked into Westminster an'Q cried out against the bishops. 
The same hostile parties at a later date were called Whigs and Tories. 
See note, page 2, line 12. 

What are the parties in England to-day? Are they essentially the 
same as the above ? 

P. 4, 1. 29. Sidney. Algernon Sidney, 1622-1683. In 1682 one of 
the council of six which managed the affairs of the Whig party. 
Accused of complicity in the Rye House Plot (a plan of the extreme 
Whigs to murder Charles II. and the Duke of York), and, on insuflfi- 
cient evidence, was condemned and beheaded. 

P. 5, 1. 1. Jeffreys. Lord George Jeffreys, 1648-1689. Chief 
Justice of the King's Bench in the reigns of Charles II. and James 
II. His circuit was called the " Bloody Assize." 

P. 5, 1. 8. Created peers. Peers, the hereditary nobility of Eng- 
land. The English peerage is not a caste, as was the French nobility. 
Until the thirteenth century the ownership of land was a necessary 
condition of nobility. Now peers are created by letters-patent ; i.e., 
open letters bearing the royal seal. There were numerous creations 



126 macaVlaT. 

under the Georges for political services rendered, in fact, most of the 
present titles can be traced no further back. 

What distinguished literary man was raised to a peerage a few years 
ago? 

Saronets. An hereditary knighthood. First created by James I. 
when in want of money for the support of his army. 

Page 5, Link 14. For Walpole's Excise Scheme, see note, page 
55, line 4. 

P. 5, 1. 14. Septennial Parliaments. The Septennial Act, pro- 
longing the duration of Parliament to seven years, was passed in 
1716. Between 1694 and 1716 the duration of each Parliament was 
three years. Before 1694, there was no specified term. 

P. 5, 1. 15. Quarter sessions. A bringing together of all Justices 
of the Peace at least four times a year. Primarily a court of appeal 
from penal sentences. 

P. 5, 1. 20. Heir apparent. Frederic, Prince of "Wales. He died 
in 1761, nine years before his father. 

P. 6, 1. 22. Jacobites. Adherents of the Stuart cause after the 
Revolution of 1688. Meaning of the word ? 

P. 6, 1. 4. House of Brunswick. See note, page 2, line 23. 

P. 6, 1. 5. Russells, Cavendishes, and the Pelhams. Distin- 
guished "Whig families. See Grefen's " Short History." 

P. 6, 1.9. "Wrekin. A hill in Shropshire. 

P. 6, 1. 11. Oxford. Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, 1661-1724. 
Distinguished Tory and a Prime Minister under Queen Anne. See 
Green's " Short History," Chap. IX. 

P. 6, 1. 11. White staff. Badge of authority as Lord Treasurer. 

P. 6, 1. 12. Queen Anne. Anne, daughter of James II., reigned 
from 1702-1714. 

P. 6, 1. 25. Timoleon. Born about 400 B.C.. An illustrious Greek 
statesman and general. Rescued Syracuse from the hands of Diony- 
sius and other tyrants. 

P. 6, 1. 25. Brutus. "What historical reference? 

P. 7, 1. 3. The Rump. So called because it contained the rump, 
or, " fag-end," of the Long Parliament (1640-1653). The members of 
the *' rump " were expelled by Cromwell because they were becoming 
jealous of his power. 

P. 7, 1. 9. Heir of the House of Stuart. Charles Edward Stuart, 
the Young Pretender, grandson of James II. 



NOTES. 127 

Page 7, Line 10. Discontented heir. See note, page 5, 
line 20. 

P. 7, 1. 12. Cuiloden. A battle fought in the north of Scotland 
between Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, and troops of George 
II. under the Duke of Cumberland, 1746. 

P. 7, 1. 22. Minorca. The smaller of the two principal Balearic 
Islands. Key of the Mediterranean. 

P. 7, 1. 24. House of Bourbon. Royal family of France, 
founded by Henry of Navarre (Henry IV.) in 1576. This line ruled 
France until 1848, excepting the period of the Republic and the 
empire of Napoleon I. 

P. 7, 1. 30. Duke of Newcastle, 1693-1768. One of the famous 
family of Pelhams. A minister under Walpole. 

P. 7, 1. 30. Alternate victories, etc. See Macaulay's first " Essay 
on the Earl of Chatham." 

P. 8, 1. 17. Pelham, Newcastle's brother, Henry Pelham, 1695-1754. 
Leader of the ministry after the death of Walpole. See Green's 
" Short History," Chap. X., " The Pelhams," and Macaulay's " Essay 
on Horace "Walpole's letters." 

P. 8, 1. 19. The boroughs, etc. A reference to the towns called 
"pocket," or "rotten buroughs," which, with no, or scarcely any, in- 
habitants, still continued to have representation in Parliament. All 
parliamentary boroughs had been specified previous to the Revolution 
of 1688 ; and no provision was made in ca^e of an increase or decrease in 
population. Hence it happened that large towns, which had become 
important since 1688, as Manchester and Sheffield, were without repre- 
sentation, while towns of no importance, as Sudbury and Old Sarum, 
enjoyed this privilege. Old Sarum hadn't a single inhabitant. The 
House of Commons had lost its representative character. The younger 
Pitt said at a later time, " This House is not the representative of the 
People of Great Britain. It is the representative of nominal boroughs, 
of ruined and exterminated towns, of noble families, of wealthy in- 
dividuals, of foreign potentates." 

P. 9, 1. 2. Well qualified. Horace Walpole wrote, •* Mr. Pitt 
does everything, and the Duke gives everything." 

P. 9, 1. 4. Treasury. The first Lord of the Treasury is usually 
Prime Minister. See note, page 27, line 15. 

P. 9, 1. 5. Patronage. See note, page 24, line 1. 



128 MACAULAY. 

Page 9, Line 6. Secret-service money. Money appropriated and 
expended without account. Given by the ministers for secret pen- 
sions and direct bribery. See note, page 8, line 19, and page 24, line 1. 

P. 9, 1. 8. Secretary of State. First mentioned in reign of Henry 
III. At first a clergyman, and called the " king's clerk." Assumed 
importance in reign of Elizabeth. 

P. 9, 1. 13. Gold sticks. See dictionary. - . 

P. 9, 1. 13. Ribands. (Ribbons). Insignia of rank. 

P. 9, 1. 14. Lincoln's Inn Fields. An open space, the resort of 
beggars and quacks. Some of the noble families had dwellings 
near it. 

P. 9, 1. 16. Lawn sleeves. See dictionary. " A saint in crape is 
twice a saint in lawn." — Pope 

P. 9, 1. 21, 22, 25. Excise, Prebend, Potwallopers. See dic- 
tionary. 

P. 10, 1. 13. Lucrative contracts. Government contracts, as 
supplying the navy with beef, etc. Another way of bribing. 

P. 10, 1. 14. Cornisli Corporation. The officials of the corpora- 
tion of a town or borough elected its representatives to Parliament. 
These officials were ready to sell their votes to the highest bidder. 
Hence to secure the votes of these officials. See note, page 8, line 19. 

P. 12, 1. 1. Cavendish, Lennox, etc. Great Whig families. 
Landed proprietors, who controlled the Whig party during the first 
half of the eighteenth century. 

P. 12, 1. 9. Head of the Grenvilles. Richard Grenville, Earl 
Temple, 1711-1779. A brother of George Grenville, the author of the 
Stamp Act. 

P. 12, 1. 15. Keeper of the privy seal. The privy seal is affixed 
to charters, pardons, etc., before they come to the great seal, the 
"emblem of sovereignty." In some cases of minor importance, it is 
sufficient to pass the privy seal. 

P. 12, 1. 15. His brother George. George Grenville, 1712-1770. 
Author of the Stamp Act. See page 29, line 7, and ff. 

P. 12, 1. 20. Bloomsbury gang. The Bedford house stood in 
Bloomsbury Square. 

P. 12, 1. 29. Rigby. Rigby was called the " boatswain of the 
Bloomsbury crew." He was the most notable placeman of the age. 

P. 13, 1. 10. Lord Lieutenant, etc. Sometimes a member of the 
Cabinet. See note, page 14, line 18. 



NOTES. 129 

Page 13, Line 16. William Murray, 1704-1T93. Afterwards Lord 
Mansfield. See page 38, line 29. 

Henry Fox, Lord Holland. He died in 1774. The father of Charles 
James Fox. For Murray and Fox, see Macaulay's first " Essay on the 
Earl of Chatham," also page 47, line 18, and ff. 

P. 13, 1. 17. Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and four justices 
presided at this court, the highest criminal court in the kingdom. 
Before 1806 the chief justice was a member of the Cabinet. 

P. 13, 1. 26. Boy Charles. Charles James Fox, 1749-1806. One of 
the most celebrated English statesmen and orators. Called ' * the 
most accomplished debater that ever appeared on the theatre of public 
affairs." He opposed Lord ^North's policy of American taxation. 
See any English History of the period. 

P. 14, 1. 5-10. Hardwicke, Legge, Townsend, etc. For further 
mention, see Macaulay's first " Essay on Chatham." 

P. 14, 1. 18. Cabinet, or Ministry. The Cabinet in England has no 
constitutional existence. In the eye of the law it is merely a com- 
mittee of the Privy Council. (See note, page 26, line 18.) 

It represents the will of the majority of the House of Commons, 
and its members are not the king's servants as they fomerly were. 
This change was brought about in the reign of William and Mary 
through the efforts of Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland. Since 
that time, if there is a vote in the House of Commons adverse to the 
policy of the Cabinet, all of the members either resign or apply to the 
crown for a dissolution of Parliament. There are usually from eleven 
to seventeen members of the Cabinet. See Macaulay's " History of 
England," Vol. IV, Chap. XX. 

P. 14, 1. 20. Militia. Pitt reorganized the militia in 1757. 

P. 14, 1. 25. The Cocoa Tree. A celebrated tavern of London 
on St. James Street, Piccadilly. Called the " Wit's Coffee House." 

P. 15, 1. 7. Inclosure bills. Bills for the inclosure of common 
lands. Sanction for inclosing the common lands had to be obtained 
of Parliament, but many influential men obtained this permission, 
thus taking away the privilege of using these lands from the common 
people. 

P. 16, 1. 5. Emperor Francis. Francis Joseph Karl, 1768-1835. 
Francis I. of Austria. He was the last emperor of the Holy Roman 
Empire, which was brought to an end by the great victory of Napoleon 
I. at the battle of Austerlitz in 1805. 



130 MACAULAT. 

Page 16, Line 6. Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon I. 1769-1821. 
After divorcing Josephine he married Maria Louise, daughter of 
Francis I. of Austria. 

P. 16, L 12. Richard Cromwell, 1626-1712. Eldest son of Oliver 
Cromwell, Protector of England. He succeeded his father as Pro- 
tector in 1658, but soon abdicated. 

P. 16, 1. 17. Guelphs. The House of Hanover. The Guelphs and 
Gibellines were two great parties in Germany and Italy which con- 
tended for supremacy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 

P. 16, 1. 27. The Elector. See note, page 2, line 23. 

P. 16, 1. 28. Crown of another. See note, page 7, line 9. 

P. 16, 1. 29. Blood of the brave, etc. See note, page 7, line 12, 
and page 18, line 13. 

P. 17, 1. 22. St. James's. The royal palace of the sovereigns 
of England. 

Hernhausen. Palace of the House of Hanover, near the city of 
Hanover, Germany. 

The Electorate of Hanover and the English monarchy were united 
until the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. Why separated then? 

P. 18, 1. 12. Revolution. See note, page 2, line 29. 

Act of Settlement, 1701. The crown to pass after Anne to the 
Electress Sophia of Hanover and her Protestant descendants. George 
I. was her son. See note, page 2, lines 23 and 27. 

P. 18, 1. 13. Risings of 1715. An attempt of the Old Pretender, 
James, son of James II., to gain the throne. He was aided by the 
high Tories. See Green's "Short History," Chap. IX. Jacobite 
Revolt. 

And of 1745. See note, page 7. line 12. 

P. 18, 1. 14. Derwentw^ater, Kilmarnock, etc. These four men 
aided the Young Pretender, and were executed after his defeat at 
Culloden. 

P. 18, 1. 16. Old line. Stuart line. See note, page 2, line 29 ; and 
note, page 18, line 12. 

P. 19, 1. 3. Apis. The sacred bull worshipped by the Egyptians. 

P. 19, 1. 8. Doges, Stadtholders, etc. See dictionary. William 
III. was a Stadtholder in Holland before he became King of England. 

P. 19, 1. 11. Dido, etc. Dido, Queen of Carthage. Virgil's 
♦'iEneid," Book IV., 20-24. 

P. 19, 1. 14. Harley. See note, page 6, line 11. 



NOTES. 131 

Page 19, Line 15. Somersets, Lees, etc. Noted Tory families. 

P. 19, 1. 20. Atterbury. Bishop Atterbury, a Jacobite leader. 

P. 20, 1. 5. Detractors of the Princess-dowager. Lord Cob- 
ham said of her, " She was the ouly woman he could never find out; 
all he had discovered was, that she hated those most to whom she 
paid most court." 

P. 20, 1. 23. Groom of the Stole. Officer of the Household. 

P. 20, 1. 29. Scotch Representative peers. The Scotch peers 
choose from their number sixteen representatives, whose term of office 
expires with the Parliament for which they are chosen. See page 27, 
line 6. 

P. 21, 1. 10. Lothario. A gay libertine. The character came 
originally from " The Fair Penitent," by Rowe, 

P. 21, 1.21. Sir Charles Grandison. "History of Sir Charles 
Grandison." A novel of Samuel Richardson, the celebrated English 
novelist. Scott says of the character, "The faultless monster that 
the world ne'er saw," 

P. 21, 1. 23. Leicester House. Residence of Frederick, Prince of 
Wales. Called the " Pouting-place for princes." Why? 

P. 22, 1, 20. Kew. There is a palace here, once the favorite resi- 
dence of George III. 

P. 22, 1, 29. SachevereU. Dr. Sacheverell, a Tory churchman, 
was impeached by the Whig ministers in Queen Anne's reign for a 
sermon preached against the war, and in favor of non-resistance. 

Perceval. Spencer Perceval, a Prime Minister of George III. from 
1809-1812 at the time of the famous " right of search." Assassinated. 

P. 22, 1. 30. Bolingbroke. Henry St. John, 1678-1751. " A man 
of splendid talents." Prime Minister of Queen Anne, and an associ- 
ate of Robert Harley (note, page 6, line 11), At the death of Anne, 
he tried to place James, the Pretender, on the throne. Was impeached 
and banished. 

P. 23, 1, 16. William and Mary. From 1689-1702. What was 
the instrument ? See note, page 2, line 29. 

P. 23, 1. 23. House of Commons. See note, page 14, line 18. 

P. 24, 1. 1. Control of Individuals. Newcastle, it is said, con- 
trolled a third of all the borough members of the House. The seats 
in Parliament of these boroughs were sold by their " patrons " or sold 
themselves, — " Titles, pensions, or hard cash, satisfying the varying 
wants of all." See note, page 8, line 19. 



132 MACAULAT. 

Page 24, Line 2, Debates published. In 1771, Wilkes forced the 
Commons to allow the publication of debates. Since this time 
debates have been published, although sometimes asserted a breach 
of faith. 

P. 24, I. 30. Reforming the Constitution. Although attempts 
at reform were made by Wilkes, Burdett, and especially by the Elder 
and Younger Pitt, it was not until 1832 that a complete Reform Bill 
was passed. 

P. 25, 1.10. Be master. ''George, George, be king" was the 
instruction his mother, the Princess of Wales, had repeatedly given 
to him. See page 54, line 15. 

P. 25, 1. 12. Ministers. See note, page 14, line 18. 

P. 25, 1. 15. Constituent bodies or the representative body. 
See note, page 24, line 1. 

P. 25, 1. 25, 26. Equip a sloop, etc. Since the Revolution of 1688, the 
crown has been dependent for its ordinary revenues on the House of 
Comuions. At this time Parliament stopped granting revenue for 
life, and resolved that henceforth the vote of supplies, even for the 
household, should be an annual one. 

P. 25, 1. 28. Sudbury and Old Sarum. See note, page 8, line 19. 

Pitt represented Old Sarum in 1735. 

P. 25, 1. 30. Privy seals, Ship-money. See note, page 12, line 
15. Methods resorted to by Charles I. to raise money, namely, grant- 
ing monopolies, forced loans, and illegal taxation. See Green's 
" Short History," Chap. VIII. 

P, 26, 1. 8. Dodingtons and Winningtons. Men noted for their 
venality. See page 14, lines 10-16. 

P. 26, 1. 18. His Council. The privy council is the only body that 
can advise the sovereign, Jjut in reality it simply ratifies in a formal 
way the doings of the cabinet. See note, page 14, line 18. 

P. 26, 1. 29. Introduced into the cabinet. Oificers of the royal 
household had usually been privy councillors, but never members of 
the cabinet. 

P. 26, 1. 30. Lord Holdernesse resigned the seals. He was 
bribed with a pension, 

P. 27, 1. 15. Legge. See page 14, line 6. 

Chancellor of Exchequer. Head of the financial system. For- 
merly and now occasionally united with the office of First Lord of 
the Treasury, who is usually Premier. Always a member of the 



NOTES. 133 

Commons, as it is he who presents the " budget," or " estimated 
expenses," which can only take place in the Lower House. See 
page 9, line 4. 

Page 27, Line 26. Montague. Charles Montague, 1661-1715. 

Chancellor of the Exchequer under William III. One of the 
ablest of England's financiers. He established the Bank of England 
in 1694, the plan of the Bank having been proposed by William Pater- 
son, a Scotchman, three years before. 

P. 27, 1. 26. Godolphin. Lord Godolphin, 1640-1712. A skilled 
financier. Tory minister of William III. and of Anne. 

P. 28, 1. 5. Party in a dispute, etc. It was Pitt's policy to con- 
quer America in Germany. This was the " Seven Years' War " in 
Europe. 

P. 28, 1. 6. House of Hapsburg. The Royal Family of Austria. 
So called from the Castle of Hapsburg in Switzerland, the first home 
of the family. 

House of Brandenburg. The great House of Hohenzollern. 
The Elector of Brandenburg became the first King of Prussia. Fred- 
erick the Great claimed Silesia, which Charles VI. had left to his 
daughter Maria Theresa. See note, page 31, line 28. 

P. 28, 1. 11. Tower guns were fired. The guns of the Tower of 
Loudon were fired on receiving the news of an English victory. 

P. 28, 1. 20. Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. Pitt had placed 
him at the head of the English and Hanoverian troops in Ger- 
many. 

P. 29, 1. 4, 5. Duke of Bedford. See page 4, line 20. 

Earl of Hard^vicke. See page 14, line 5. 

P. 29, 1. 12. Spenser. Edmund Spenser, 1553 ( ?)-1599. This is 
his greatest poem. 

P. 29, 1. 20. VatteL 1714-1767. A celebrated Swiss jurist, and an 
authority in international law. 

P. 29, 1. 30. The Temple. Comprising two famous Inns of Court 
of London, the Middle and the Inner Temple. There were two 
others, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn. Something like our law 
schools. 

P. 30, 1. 7. Onslow. Arthur Onslow, 1690-1768. Speaker of the 
House of Commons for thirty-three years. Some one has said, " He 
filled that chair with higher merit, probably, than any one either 
before or after him." 



134 MACAULAY, 

Page 30, Line 27. Burke. 1730-1797. Edmund Burke, the famous 
Irish orator and statesman. The friend of America during the Revo- 
lutionary War. See page 82, line 3, and ff. 

P. 30, 1. 29. Ovid. 43 B.C. -18 A.D. Author of the famous Meta- 
morphoses. The reference, Metamorphoses, II. 794-796. 

P. 31, 1. 10. Victorious. In America, by the capture of Quebec 
and the conquest of Canada, in India in Lord Clive's campaigns, 
and in Germany, sharing in the victories of Frederick tlie Great. 

P. 31, 1. 25, 27. Charles the Third and the Two Sicilies. Don 
Carlos was made King of Naples and Sicily as a united kingdom in 
1736. He became Charles III. of Spain. 

P. 31, 1. 28. Coalition against Maria Theresa. Maria Theresa, 
the daughter of Charles VI., of the House of Austria, the Emperor 
of Germany. At the death of her father, in 1740, she succeeded to the 
Austrian dominion. But Frederick the Great claimed Silesia, and 
Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, set up a claim to the Austrian 
States. This brought on the " War of the Austrian Succession, 1740- 
1748. France, Spain, and Prussia fought against the Queen, while 
England, in order to diminish the power of France, her great enemy, 
supported the princess. See Macaulay's ** Essay on Frederick the 
Great." 

P. 32, 1. 17. Family Compact. So called because both kings 
were of the Bourbon family. 

P. 32, 1. 21. Fleet with the treasures of America. Ships which 
brought the gold and silver from the Spanish colonies in America. 

P. 33, 1. 8. Pitt resigned. A French philosopher said, " Pitt dis- 
graced, it is worth two victories to us ! " 

P. 33, 1. 27. Gazette. Mouthpiece of the court All official com- 
munications were made through it. 

P. 34, 1. 17. L/ord-Mayor's day. The ninth of November, the 
day on which the Lord-Mayor of London is sworn into office. A great 
day in London: processions, and afterwards a banquet at Guildhall to 
which royalty and ministers are invited. 

P. 34, 1. 18. Guildhall. Seat of the municipal government of 
London; the city hall. 

P. 34, 1. 27. No Newcastle salmon. See note, page 7, line 30. 

P. 35, 1. 2. Cheapside. Formerly called West Cheap. The great 
street of ancient London. 

P. 35, 4. 17. Manila. The capital of the Philippine Islands. 



NOTES. 135 

Page 36, Line 8. Charles Townsend. 1725-1767. See page 99, 
line 30, and page 306, line 30. 

P. 36, 1. 27. Grub Street garrets. The residence of "rakes" 
and second-rate authors. 

P. 37, 1. 2. Poetasters of the Fleet. The Fleet was a famous 
London prison for debtors. So called from its situation near Fleet 
River. Not used since 1844. 

P. 38, 1. 7. Archbishopric of York. The Archbishop of York 
is the second ecclesiastic in England, the Archbishop of Canterbury 
being the first. 

P. 38, 1. 29. Lord Mansfield. See note, page 13, line 16. 

P. 39, 1. 20. Sir Francis Dashwood. One of the wits of the day- 
describes him as " A man to whom a sum of five figures was an im- 
penetrable secret." 

P. 39, 1. 26. The king over the -water. The Pretender lived in 
France. See note, page 7, line 9. One Jacobite song sung especially 
by Scotch sympathizers : — 

*• Over the water, and over the sea, 
And over the water to Charlie ; 
Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go, 
And live or die with Charlie." 

P. 40, 1. 17. Her burgesses. Her representatives in Parliament. 
First granted by James I. 

P. 40, I. 30. Carteret. John Carteret, Earl Granville, 1690-1763. 
A very able Whig statesman. Member of the cabinet under Wal- 
pole. The Pelhams (see note, page 7, line 30) had forced the king 
to part with Carteret. See Macaulay's first "Essay on the Earl of 
Chatham." 

P. 41, 1. 11. German Connections. The English subsidies 
which Pitt had promised Frederick the Great were withdrawn, 
almost to the ruin of that prince. Bute went so far as to offer to 
give Silesia to Austria and East Prussia to Russia in return for 
peace. See note, page 31, line 28, and page 28, line 5. 

P. 41, 1. 13. Terminated by a peace. Peace of Paris, September, 
1763. This closed the Seven Years' War, or, as we call it, the French 
and Indian War. What did England gain by it ? 

P. 41, 1. 26. Duke of Devonshire. "Prince of Whigs" the 
Princess-mother called him. Prime Minister for a brief period under 
George II. See page 51, line 20. 



136 MACAULAT, 

Page 41, Line 27. Lord Chamberlain. The chief functionary 
of the royal household. Always a peer of high rank, and goes out 
with the ministry. 

P. 41, 1. 29. Pay Office. See page 13, line 21. It was " usual for 
foreign princes who received the pay of England to give to the Pay- 
master of the Forces a small percentage on the subsidies." 

P. 42, 1. 7. Duke of Buckingham. George Villiers. The favor- 
ite of James I. and of Charles I. He was assassinated in 1628. 

P. 42, 1. 11. StraflFord (see note, page 4, line 10), Falkland, 
Clarendon, Sunderland (see note, page 14, line 18), etc. See Eng- 
lish History during the Stuarts. 

P. 42, 1. 21. Carr. A worthless favorite of James I. before Buck- 
ingham. Convicted of murder. 

P. 43, 1. 7. Blended together. (Redundancy.) England and 
Scotland were united in 1707. 

P. 43, 1. 13. Derby. Southern end of Young Pretender's route. 
He retreated for lack of support. 

P. 43, 1. 14. Bank of England. See note, page 27, line 26. 

P. 43, 1. 18. Temple Bar. A historic boundary in London divid- 
ing the city of London from the liberty of Westminster. Here stood 
the Bar or house of stone, with an archway for the passage of car- 
riages. Above the centre of the arch were iron spikes, on which 
were placed the heads and limbs of persons executed for treason. 
This custom prevailed until the present century. 

P. 43, 1. 19. Kennington Common. An enclosure of about 
twenty acres in the suburbs of London, once celebrated as a place of 
gathering of pugilists and itinerant preachers. Now a park. 

P. 43, 1. 23. High-cheeked DrunMnonds, etc. Highlauders of 
Scotland. 

P. 44, 1. 7. Maecenas. A patron of letters. So called from 
C. Maecenas, a Roman statesman in the reign of Augustus, the friend 
and patron of Virgil and Horace. 

P. 44, 1. 12. Johnson. Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784. One of 
the greatest English writers. Chief works: "The English Diction- 
ary," " Lives of British Poets," "Preface and notes to Shakespeare," 
and ** Vanity of Human Wishes." 

P. 44, 1. 16. Pillory. The pillory was in use in England before 
the Norman Conquest and until 1837. 



NOTES. 137 

Page 44, Line 21. Reynolds. Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1723-1792. 
The most celebrated English portrait-painter. 

P. 44, 1. 27. Author of the Bard, etc. Thomas Gray. 

P. 45, 1. 12. In his chair. Sedan chair. Invented at Sedan, 
France. In the eighteenth century the Sedan chair was the vehicle 
used by the nobility of London in going short distances. 

P. 45, 1. 17. Covent Garden. Formerly occupied by taverns and 
coffee-houses, the resort of wits and literary men. 

P. 45, 1. 25. Willtes. John Wilkes, 1727-1797. A man of dis- 
solute habits and disgraceful private life, with " the requisites for the 
character of demagogue," says Macaulay. Yet he was instrumental 
in bringing about three great reforms : the recognition by Parliament 
of the right of every constituency to return the member of its choice, 
the freedom of the press, and the reporting of the debates in Parlia- 
ment. 

P. 45, 1. 27, 28. Mother of Edward the Third. Queen Isabella, 
wife of Edward II., a woman of remarkable beauty, but of unre- 
strained wantonness. She, with Roger Mortimer, plotted the de- 
thronement of her husband. Edward III. had Mortimer hanged, and 
his mother placed in close confinement. 

P. 45, 1. 28. Churchill. Charles Churchill, 1731-1764. A poet 
and satirist, also a clergyman. A friend of Wilkes. 

P. 46, 1. 1. The Picts or the Danes. Fierce tribes of Scotland 
and of Scandinavia who overran England, the former during the 
Roman occupation and the latter in the ninth century. 

P. 46, 1. 2. Leprosy. Leprosy afflicted Scotland for many years. 

P. 47, 1. 1. Whig connection. See page 12, line 1, and note. 

P. 47, 1. 18. One man, Henry Fox. See page 13, line 16, and 
note. 

P. 47, 1. 29. William, Duke of Cumberland, 1721-1765. Son of 
George II., and uncle of George III. The victor at Culloden. 

P. 48, 1. 16. Holland House, beyond Kensington, the seat of the 
Earl of Holland. Henry Fox became Lord Holland. 

P. 48, 1. 23. Intended marriage. Bute and the princess-mother, 
alarmed at the intimacy of the king with Lady Sarah Lenox, had 
brought this about. 

P. 50, 1. 1. Virgil's foot-race, "^neid," Book V., 288-361. An 
apt illustration. Virgil, 70-19 B.C. The greatest Roman epic poet. 

P. 50, 1. 21. Vote for peace. See note, page 41, line 13. 



138 MACAU LAY. - - 

Page 51, Line 8. A mart for votes. During the year, £82,000 of 
secret-service money was spent. See note, page 9, line 6. 

P. 51, 1. 19. Lords-Lieutenants of counties. See dictionary. 

P. 52, 1. 4. Gold key. Badge of the oflBice of Lord Chamberlain. 
See note, page 41, lines 26 and 27. 

P. 52, 1. 24. Duke of Grafton. See page 81, line 23. 

P. 53, 1. %. Patents granted. Patent places. Granting titles of 
nobility for life. The Chancellor said in reply, " Yes, they might lay 
the idea before the Judges, and then refer Magna Charta to them after- 
wards, to decide on that too." 

P. 53, 1. 11. Tellers of Exchequer and Justices in Eyre. See 
dictionary. 

P. 54, 1. 13. A large majority. The vote was 319 and 65. 

P. 54, 1. 26. Budget. See note, page 27, line 15. 

P. 55, 1. 4. Excise. Dr. Johnson's definition, **A hateful tax 
upon commodities, and adjudged not by common judges of property, 
but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid." Walpole's 
excise scheme was "to transfer the taxes on tobacco and wine from 
the customs to the excise : " i.e., levy a tax at the manufactory instead 
of at the port. This was to prevent smuggling. 

P. 55, 1. 13. Gentry and Yeomanry. See dictionary. 

P. 55, 1. 18. Dashwood. See note, page 39, line 20. 

P. 58, 1. 29. Garter. Highest order of English knighthood, and 
consists of not more than twenty-five knights, besides illustrious for- 
eigners and royalty. 

P. 60, 1. 9. Restoration. In 1660, when Charles II. came to the 
throne after the period of the Commonwealth. 

P. 60, 1. 16, 17. Mayor of the Palace. Officers of a line of feeble 
and inefficient French princes (Merovingians) called "do-nothings" 
in the seventh and eighth century. These officers, called Mayors of 
the Palace, put down their sovereign and established a new line, the 
Carolingian. 

Childeric and Chilperic were the names of kings of the Merovin- 
gian line. 

P. 60, 1. 20. Windsor Park. A park at Windsor, England, 
stocked with game for the use of the sovereigns. 

P. 61, 1. 3. John Wilkes. See note, page 45, line 25. 

P. 62, 1. 1. The Times and Morning Chronicle. Established 
soon after the beginning of the Revolutionary War. 



NOTES. 139 

Page 62, Line 6. General Warrants. A warrant in which no 
name is inserted, but the officers may arrest whom they suspect. 
Tlieir use in America denounced by the colonists. Condemned as 
illegal by House of Commons in 1766. See page 92, line 14. 

Tovp'er. "The ancient and famous citadel of London." Famous 
for the distinguished persons who have been confined within its walls 
as prisoners of state. Now a depository for the crown jewels and 
national arms. 

P. 62, 1. 8. Papers were seized. See page 92, line 14. 

P. 62, 1. 12. Court of Common Pleas. Consists of a chief-justice 
and four judges. The chief civil court, and must be held at West- 
minster. 

P. 62, 1. 13. Chief Justice Pratt. Charles Pratt, Earl of Camden, 
1714-1794. A very eminent statesman and jurist. A great friend of 
Pitt. A friend of America, and a powerful opponent of Lord North 
in relation to American taxation. 

P. 63, 1. 10. Buckingham House. In St. James Park. Called 
the Queen's palace. The favorite residence of George III. and the 
Queen. 

P. 64, 1. 24. Cornet Joyce. Leader of the Adjutators when they 
carried off Charles I. from the Parliamentary Commissioners at 
Holmby House in 1647. 

President Bradshaw. John Bradshaw, 1586-1659. President of 
the High Court of Justice which tried Charles I. 

P. 64, 1. 29, Pope. Alexander Pope, 1688-1744. The celebrated 
poet and critic. 

P. 65, 1. 1. Warburton edited Pope's works. 

P. 65, 1. 5. Horace, 65-8 B.C. Roman poet. 

P. 65, 1. 19, 22. Lord March and Earl of Sandwich. Men 
notorious for their vices, and Sandwich, at least, had been intimate 
with Wilkes. 

P. 66, 1. 18. Macheath. Captain Macheath, a highwayman, who 
is the hero of Gay's "Beggar's Opera." 

P. 67, 1. 26. Henry Conway, 1720-1795. In 1782, as commander- 
in-chief of the army, he made the motion to terminate hostilities 
against the United States. 

P. 69, 1. 12. Dismissal of the Whigs. Queen Anne dismissed 
her Whig ministers, and appointed a Tory ministry with Harley and 
St. John at its head. 



140 MACAULAY. 

Page 69, Line 13. The Peace of Utrecht, 17l3. The treaty wag 
negotiated by the Tory ministry contrary to the desire of the Whigs. 
In order to get a vote for the peace, twelve peers were created by 
Harley. 

P. 69, 1. 13. Desertion of our allies. During the War of the 
Spanish Succession, by reason of secret negotiations for peace between 
Great Britain and France, England withdrew her troops from the 
Allied army (Germany, Holland, and England) and left it at the 
mercy of France. 

P. 69, 1. 17. Disgrace of Marlborough. John Churchill, Duke 
of Marlborough, 1650-1722. The ablest commander that England has 
ever produced, at least next to Wellington. "He never besieged a 
fortress which he did not take, or fought a battle which he did not 
win." The chief adviser of Anne until the latter part of her reign. 
He was disgraced by a dismissal from his command, charged with 
dishonesty. 

P. 69, 1. 20. Treaty negotiated by Bedford. See page 41, 
line 25. 

Wrongs of House of Austria. Imperial family of Germany. 
See note, page 69, 1. 13. 

P. 69, 1. 22. Wrongs of the House of Brandenburg. See note, 
page 28, line 6, and page 31, line 28. Frederick the Great was trying 
to make Prussia the equal of Austria. 

P. 71, 1. 13. At Westminster; i.e., in Parliament. 

P. 72, 1. 6. Another Act. The Regency Act passed in 1765. . 

P. 72, 1. 7. The King fell ill. The beginning of his insanity. It 
became incurable in 1810. 

P. 72, 1. 11. Heir apparent. Afterward George IV. 

P. 73, 1. 13. The Junta. A faction consisting of Russell, Somers, 
Charles Montague, and several other Whigs of note, in the reign of 
William III. 

P. 73, 1. 24. Coligni, 1527 (?)-1572. The brave Huguenot general. 

P. 73, 1. 25. Marshal Soult, 1769-1851. One of the bravest and 
most distinguished generals under Napoleon I. 

P. 74, 1. 12. Discipline of Potsdam. Referring to the stern dis- 
cipline under which Frederick the Great kept his soldiers. 

P. 74, 1. 16. Smothering in the Tower. Richard III., at his 
accession to the throne, placed his young nephews, Edward V. and 
his brother, the Duke of York, in the Tower. The boys suddenly 



]^OTES. 141 

disappeared, and it was alleged that they had been murdered by 
Richard's orders. 

Page 7G, Line 14. Extinxti, etc. Virgil's " Aneid," IV., 
G82. 

P. 76, 1. 26. Spitalfield's weavers. Unemployed silk weavers. 
The House of Lords rejected a bill passed by the Commons to impose 
as high duties on Italian silks as on the silks of France. The Duke 
of Bedford alone spoke against it. 

P. 77, 1. 18. Charles in Isle of Wight. In 1647, Charles I. went 
to the Isle of Wight expecting to receive aid, but found himself a 
prisoner. 

P. 79, 1. 26. Sandys, Winnington, and Yonge. Ministers under 
Robert Walpole's administration ; of very low morals. 

P. 79, 1. 27. Hampden. See note, page 4, line 4. 

P. 79, 1. 29. Russell. Lord William Russell, 1639-1683. Unjustly 
executed with Sidney (see note, page 4, 1. 29) for suspected complicity 
in the Rye-house plot. 

P. 80, 1. 9. Marquis of Rockingham, 1730-1782. 

P. 82, 1. 17. Turk's Head. A famous coffee-house in the Strand 
in London, frequented by Dr. Johnson and Boswell his biographer. 

P. 83, 1. 26. Exchange of London. The great financial centre. 
Built for the use of merchants and bankers in the sixteenth century. 
Twice destroyed by fire. 

P. 84, 1. 21. Penal laws. Referring to laws enacted against 
Roman Catholics. All laws against this sect were not repealed until 
Relief Bill of 1829. 

P. 85, 1. 6. Toleration Act. Granting freedom to religious 
beliefs. The first act of this kind known in English history was 
passed in 1689, at the time of William III. 

P. 85, 1. 22. Waters of Bath. The Romans called Bath Aquae 
Solis. Celebrated for its hot springs. Called the handsomest city of 
England. 

P. 85, 1. 24. Condemned the Stamp Act. It was during this 
debate that Pitt gave utterance to these memorable words: "In my 
opinion this kingdom has no right to lay a tax on the colonies. . . . 
America is obstinate ! America is almost in open rebellion ! Sir, I 
rejoice that America has resisted. Three million of people so dead to 
all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves would 
have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest."' 



142 3IACAULAY. 

Page 86, Line 2. Liturj^y of Edinburgh. Charles I. tried to force 
upon Scotland a Book of Canons and a new Liturgy, which practi- 
cally abolished the Presbyterian system and superseded the Knox 
Liturgy. 

P. 88, 1. 16. Sheridan. Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan, 1751- 
1816, He was a boon companion of the Prince Regent, afterward 
George IV. 

P. 90, 1. 24. Court of Requests. Called Court of Conscience. A 
court for the recovery of small debts. 

P. 94, 1. 28. Wedderburn. At his death, George III. said of him, 
"He has not left a greater knave behind him in my dominions." 

P. 95, 1. 16. Ormond pattern. Duke of Ormond, 1610-1688. A 
firm adherent to the Stuart cause during the civil war and the Com- 
monwealth. 

P. 96, 1. 8. Wallenstein. A celebrated German general of the 
Imperial army in the Thirty Years' "War. 

P. 96, 1. 17. Conquerors of Bengal, etc. See Macaulay's " Lord 
Clive " 

P. 97, 1. 26« Richmond. The seat of a royal palace ten miles from 
London. 

P. 99, 1. 26. Lord Shelburne, Marquis of Lansdowne, 1737-1805. 
Prime Minister in 1782. 

P. 100, 1. 20. Kissed hands. The prime minister kisses the hands 
of the sovereign when he takes office. 

P. 101, 1. 20. The Monument. Erected to commemorate the 
great fire of 1666. It stands on the spot where the fire first broke 
out. 

P. 101, 1. 28. William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, 1682-1764. The 
leader of the " Patriots," a group of Whigs who were opposed to Wal- 
pole's control in reign of George II. Pitt attached himself to this 
faction when he entered Parliament. 

P. 102, 1. 10. Versailles and St. Ildefonso. Versailles was the 
royal palace of the French sovereigns after Louis XIV. 

St. Ildefonso, called La Gran j a. A royal palace in Spain, near 
Madrid. 

P. 103, 1. 13. Horace Walpole, 1717-1797. Youngest son of Sir 
Robert Walpole. A man of letters, novelist, and critic. Macaulay 
says, " He was the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastid- 
ious, the most capricious of men." 



NOTES. 143 

Page 104, Line 25. East India Company. See Macaiilay's 
"Lord Clive." By the Younger Pitt's East India Bill in 1784, the 
affairs of the company were placed under control of Parliament. 

P. 107, 1. 28. Malingering. See dictionary. 

P. 109, 1. 10. JJaid taxes. This was the tax on tea and a few other 
articles, 1767. 

P. 110, 1. 10. Lord North, 1733-1792. Prime Minister during the 
Revolutionary War. 

P. 110, 1. 16. Knight of the Shire. A knight to represent the 
county in Parliament. Chosen by the freeholders. 

P. 110, 1. 26. House had chosen, etc. They seated the Court 
candidate, Luttrell. Wilkes was returned four times before he was 
finally allowed to take his seat. The case of Bradlaugh, a few years 
ago, was somewhat parallel. 

P. Ill, 1. 6. Junius. An anonymous journalist who attacked the 
ministry, especially the Duke of Grafton and the Duke of Bedford, 
and even the King. His letters were published in the "Public 
Advertiser," from 1769 to 1772. They gave a new power to the press, 
and established its right "to criticise the conduct, not of nainisters or 
Parliament only, but of the sovereign himself." Probably written by 
Sir Philip Francis. The writer says, " I am the sole depository of my 
secret, and it shall die with me." 

P. Ill, 1. 8. Blackstone. Dr. Blackstone, 1723-1780. Author of 
the celebrated " Commentaries on the Laws of England." 

P. Ill, 1. 25. Middlesex election. See preceding page and note, 
page 45, line 25. 

P. 113, 1. 25. Col. Barre. Col. Isaac Barre', 1726-1792. British 
officer under Wolfe ; a distinguished debater. An advocate of Amer- 
ican independence. 

Dunning. John Dunning. Defended Wilkes. In 1780, he brought 
up the memorable resolution, " That ttie influence of the crown has 
increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." 

P. 114, 1. 4. Garrick, 1716-1779. A famous English actor. A 
friend and pupil of Dr. Johnson. 

Talma, 1763-1826. A celebrated French tragedian. 

P. 115, 1. 20. To deliver up its arms. Gen. Burgoyue surren- 
dered at Saratoga, Oct. 13, 1777. 

P. 115, 1. 23. Minden. The battle of Minden was won from the 
French by Ferdinand of Brunswick in command of the allies (English 
and Hanoverians). 



144 MACAULAY. 

Page 115, Line 24. Moro. A fort at the entrance to the har- 
bor of Havana. 

P. 115, 1. 27. By Spain. Spain did not recognize the independence 
of America, but she secretly aided us with money, and in 1779 joined 
France against England in the European war. 

P. 116, 1. 21. Impossible to conquer America. It was just 
before the surrender of Burgoyne that Pitt spoke these famous 
words : " You cannot conquer America. If I were an American as 
I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, 
I never would lay down my arms, never, never, never ! 

P. 117, 1. 20. His favorite son. William Pitt, 1759-1806. The 
great English Prime Minister during the last part of the eighteenth 
century. No man ever exerted such power over the House of Com- 
mons. See Macaulay's essay on the Younger Pitt. 
■ P. 117, 1. 21. Dulte of Richmond. Charles Lennox, 1735-1806. 
A grandson of a natural son of Charles II. A great friend of liberty. 

P. 120, 1. ^. Season as dark and perilous. Pitt died at the 
height of Napoleon's successes, soon after the battle of Austerlitz. 
Wilberforce wrote, "Austerlitz killed Pitt." 

P. 121, 1. 5. Grattan. Henry Grattan, 1750-1820. The brilliant 
Irish orator. 

Canning. George Canning, 1770-1827. Prime Minister in 1827. 
An eloquent orator. 

P. 121, 1. 6. Wilberforce, William, 1759-1823. A great philan- 
thropist and reformer. He obtained the abolition of the slave-trade 
in 1807. 



^^^ ^tub^nte' ^i^xm of 

To FURNISH the educational public with well-edited 
editions of those authors used in or required for 
admission to many of the colleges, the publishers 
announce this new series. The following books are now 
ready, in press, or will be published during 1890 : 

ARNOLD'S SOHRAB AND RUSTUM, and 
WEBSTER'S FIRST BUNKER HILL 
ORATION. By Louise M. Hodgkins, M.A., 
Professor of English Literature, Wellesley College. 

A BALLAD -BOOK, and COLERIDGE'S 
ANCIENT MARINER. By Katharine Lee 
Bates, B.A., Associate Professor of Literature, 
Wellesley College. 

A RUSKIN BOOK, and MACAULAY'S 
ESSAY ON LORD CLIVE. By Vida D. 
ScuDDEB, B.A., Litprature Department, Wellesley 
College. 

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS. By 

Alfred S. Roe, A.M., Principal of Worcester, Mass., 
High School. 

GEORGE ELIOT'S SILAS MARNER, and 
SCENES FROM CLERICAL LIFE. By 
Mary Harriott Norris, Instructor in English 
Literature, New York City. 

MACAULAY'S SECOND ESSAY ON THE 
EARL OF CHATHAM. By W. W. Curtis, 
A.M., Principal of the Pawtucket, R.I., High School. 

Tentative arrangements have been made for other books 
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